crudo

Forms

crudo (feminine cruda, masculine plural crudos, feminine plural crudas)^[1] Old Spanish also had cruo, with the /d/ lost, beside crudo.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish crudo, inherited from Latin crūdus (“raw; bloody; cruel”).^[5][6][1] The BDELC gives the Latin sense as properly “bleeding”, and relates the word to cruento.^[5]

The same Latin word is Portuguese cru, Galician cru, Asturian crudu, Catalan cru, Occitan crus, French cru, Italian crudo and Romanian crud.^[1][7][8] cruel comes from the Latin derivative crūdēlis.^[5]

The Latin adjective is related to cruor (“blood”).^[9][10] De Vaan tentatively reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *kreuh₂-odʰ-o- (“raw”), with the cognate Middle Irish cruaid (“hardy, harsh”), and rejects as unsupported the explanation by dissimilation of an older form with /r/.^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy) is the first text DEMel cites with crudo.^[12] The BDELC dates the word to 1220–1250, and in Berceo's Milagros (c. 1255) it means “harsh, cruel”: un exilio crudo e destemprado, “a harsh and bitter exile”.^[5][13]

Semantic evolution

In Alfonso X's prose the word already had all its main senses: food not cooked (General estoria, 1272–1275), linen not dressed (1280), stone in its natural state and, in the form cruo, “cruel” in the laws.^[3] Covarrubias (1611) explained “cruel” either by the wild beast that feeds on raw meat or by unripe fruit.^[14]

The Diccionario de Autoridades (1729) gave raw meat, unbleached fabric (lienzo crudo, seda cruda) and “cruel”.^[15][16] The 1884 edition added the weather “very cold and raw”.^[17] Today it also names crude oil and the colour of raw silk.^[6][1] In Mexico crudo is “hung over”; in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic it is “unprepared, inexperienced”.^[18][19][1]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – crudo in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (in a 13th-century copy).^[12]
• 1220–1250 – the BDELC's first date, with the derivative crudeza.^[5]
• c. 1255 – Berceo's Milagros uses it for “harsh”.^[13]
• 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General estoria uses it for uncooked meat.^[3]
• c. 1495 – first record of encrudecer.^[5]
• 1513 – Nebrija defines it “not cooked” and gives Latin crudus.^[20]
• 1515 – first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme (la cruda guerra).^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias gives “not cooked” and “cruel”.^[14]
• 1729 – the Diccionario de Autoridades adds unbleached fabric.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary adds cold, raw weather.^[17]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of food: raw, not cooked, or not cooked enough: La carne todavía está cruda.^[6][1]
2. Of fruit: unripe.^[6]
3. Of some materials, such as silk, linen or leather: not dressed or cured.^[6]
4. Of a colour: off-white, like raw silk or unbleached wool.^[6][22]
5. Cruel (cruel), harsh, blunt: Nos dio una respuesta muy cruda.^[6][1]
6. Of weather: very cold and bleak.^[6][22]
7. (Mexico, colloquial) hungover.^[18][1]

Noun

1. crude oil.^[6][1]

Word family

• crudeza
• encrudecer
• crudillo

Related words

• cruel
• crueldad
• recrudecer
• cruento
• Latin crūdus
• Portuguese cru

Usage notes

En crudo means “bluntly”, and tenerlo crudo is colloquial for “to have little chance”.^[6][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 154
3. ^ a b c 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. crudo
4. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. s.v. crudo
5. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. crudo
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. crudo
7. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 2, 1067
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1048
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. cru
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. crudo
13. ^ 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. 817
14. ^ 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. 536
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 664
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 665
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 308
18. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. crudo
19. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. crudo
20. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 321
21. ^ 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. crudo
22. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. crudo