crin

Forms

crin f (plural crines)^[1] The variant clin is found from the Fueros de Aragón of about 1300;^[2][1] clina is used in Argentina, and quilín in Cespedosa.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin crīnis (“hair; head of hair”).^[3][4][2][1] Classical Latin made the noun masculine, but Plautus and other early authors have the feminine, which prevailed in Spanish and Portuguese.^[3] The word has been mostly plural from the beginning, in Berceo too.^[3]

The same Latin word is Portuguese crina, Catalan crin, French crin and Italian crine, masculine in French and Italian.^[3][5] Corominas suspects that Catalan clin could be a Castilianism, since it keeps the final /n/.^[3]

The Latin noun goes back to *krisni- and may share with crista (“crest”) and crispus (“curly”) a stem for “crest, plume, hair”.^[6] Pokorny's link with Germanic and Celtic verbs meaning “to shake”, as if hair were “what one shakes”, is possible but not very appealing to de Vaan.^[6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Berceo's Vida de San Millán, of a man who entered the city la barba mucho luenga, la crin mucho crecida “his beard very long, his hair grown very long”.^[3][7] The Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215, known from a 14th-century copy) has sus crines albas como las nieves, of the saint's white hair.^[7] In Old Spanish it meant human hair, as in the Libro de Apolonio, and the mane of a horse.^[8][9]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose uses it both for the mane of a horse and for a woman's long hair.^[10] Covarrubias in 1611 says that in Spanish it names the bristles a horse carries on the neck, and records the phrase asirse a las crines, of a man clinging to his fortune.^[11] The Academy's 1726 dictionary still allowed it for human hair, but rarely, and noted that many people said clin.^[12] The 1843 edition added hacer las crines, the trimming of a horse's mane.^[13] Today it also names crin vegetal, a fibre from esparto, algae or mosses used in upholstery.^[2][14] In Argentina clina means a person's hair, perhaps from Portuguese.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1215 – the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca, in a 14th-century copy, uses the plural for human hair.^[7]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo's Vida de San Millán and Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos.^[4][9]
• 1256 – Alfonso X's Picatrix speaks of hairs from a horse's mane.^[10]
• c. 1300 – the variant clin in the Fueros de Aragón.^[3]
• 1438 – the derivative crinado “long-haired”.^[4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin crinis and coma for crines.^[15]
• 1541 – first record in the Americas, in Michoacán.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias limits it to the mane of a horse or other animal.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin crinis.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. mane: the long coarse hairs on the upper part of the neck of a horse and some other animals; also used in the plural with the same meaning.^[2][1]
2. One of these hairs: Hizo una cuerda trenzando crin de caballo.^[14][18]
3. crin vegetal: a fibre obtained from esparto, some algae and mosses, used for stuffing in upholstery.^[2][14]

Word family

• crinado

Related words

• crinito
• Latin crīnis
• Portuguese crina
• French crin

Usage notes

The DLE notes that the noun is masculine in some places in Spain and the Americas, and that the plural crines means the same as the singular.^[2] Hacer las crines a un caballo is to clip the short hairs near the head and over the withers.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. crin
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 243
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. crin
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. crinis
6. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. crin
8. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 153
9. ^ a b Alonso Pedraz, Martín (1986), Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, 2 vols., Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, p. 815
10. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. crin
11. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 533
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 660
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 206
14. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. crin
15. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. crin
16. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. clin
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 306
18. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. crin