cristalino

Forms

cristalino (feminine cristalina, masculine plural cristalinos, feminine plural cristalinas)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin crystallĭnus (“made of crystal”), which is from Ancient Greek κρυστάλλινος (krustállinos, “icy; of crystal”).^[2][3][4][5] The Latin word has a short vowel in the suffix and was stressed on the syllable before it; the DLE puts the Spanish stress down to the many adjectives in -ino.^[2] The Greek adjective is formed on κρύσταλλος (krústallos, “ice; rock crystal”) with the suffix -ινος (-inos).^[1][4] Beekes takes the noun as Pre-Greek, as he does all Greek words with this suffix;^[6][1] Wiktionary points to its likeness to κρύος (krúos, “cold, ice”).^[6][1]

The noun cristal comes from the same Greek word through crystallus.^[3] As the name of the lens of the eye it continues the Medieval Latin name of the “crystalline humour”, a translation of a Greek term for the “crystal-like humour”.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DTME dates the word in Spanish from 1255; the DEMel finds christalino in the Spanish Libro del Tesoro of the late 13th century.^[7][8] The DCECH and the BDELC date it only from the first half of the 15th century, in the Cancionero de Baena, in the spelling cristallino.^[3][9] There it means “made of crystal”: Salvo en rrama christalyna “except on a crystal branch”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija glosses cristalina cosa “thing of crystal” with Latin crystallinus.^[10] From the 16th century it describes clear water: corrientes aguas cristalinas in Santo Domingo in 1573, and Cervantes's corrientes cristalinas of the Guadalquivir.^[11][12] The Academy's dictionary of 1817 gives “made of crystal”, “like crystal”, and in anatomy one of the four humours of the eye, also as a noun.^[13] The DTME finds the noun in 1493 and says that Spanish was the first modern language to record it.^[7] The Academy described it in 1899 as the lens-shaped body behind the pupil, whose clouding is a cataract.^[14] Domínguez in 1846 also recorded the crystalline spheres of Ptolemy's astronomy and the poetic use for waters.^[15] The sense of physics and chemistry, “with the molecular structure of crystals”, is in the DRAE of 2001 and the DLE.^[16][2]

Timeline

• 1255 – first record in Spanish according to the DTME.^[7]
• late 13th century – christalino in the Libro del Tesoro.^[8]
• 1406–1445 – the Cancionero de Baena has cristallino, the DCECH's first record.^[3][10]
• 1493 – first record of the noun, the lens of the eye.^[7]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses it with Latin crystallinus.^[10]
• 1548 – first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo: sal cuasi cristalina.^[11]
• 1596 – the modern spelling cristalino in Fonseca.^[3]
• 1817 – the Academy records the humour of the eye.^[13]
• 1899 – the Academy defines the lens of the eye.^[14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Made of crystal or glass (cristal).^[2][17]
2. Typical of crystal: un brillo cristalino.^[2]
3. Clear, transparent, also figuratively: una risa cristalina.^[2][17]
4. (physics, chemistry) crystalline: having the molecular structure of crystals.^[2][1]

Noun

1. (anatomy) The lens of the eye, the biconvex body behind the pupil of vertebrates and cephalopods.^[2][1][7]

Related words

• cristal
• cristalizar
• Latin crystallinus
• English crystalline

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. cristalino
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 249
4. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 202
5. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. κρυστάλλινος
6. ^ a b Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. κρύσταλλος
7. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. cristalino
8. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cristalino
9. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cristal
10. ^ a b c d 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
11. ^ a b 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. cristalino
12. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. s.v. cristalino
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 254
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 284
15. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 495
16. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. cristalino
17. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cristalino