cuarto

Forms

cuarto (feminine cuarta, masculine plural cuartos, feminine plural cuartas)^[1] Old Spanish texts mostly spell it quarto, quarta, with rarer quoarto and cuarta.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin quartus (“fourth”), the ordinal of quattuor (“four”).^[3][4][1][5] The Old Spanish spelling was quarto.^[2][6] Corominas explains the noun “room” through the use of cuatro for a small, vague number (“four” meaning “a few”): the ordinal came to name one of the few parts into which something is divided, and so one of the rooms of a house.^[3][5] Wiktionary instead ties the sense to the usual division of houses into four or five sections, and Gómez de Silva to houses divided into about four parts.^[1][7] In the sense “quart”, the English unit of measure, it is a calque of the English word quart.^[1]

The same Latin word is Portuguese quarto, Galician carto, Asturian cuartu, Catalan quart, French quart and Italian quarto.^[8][9][1]

The Latin ordinal goes back to Proto-Italic *kʷeturtos and Proto-Indo-European *kʷeturtos, formed from the word for “four”, *kʷetwóres; Ancient Greek τέταρτος (tétartos) is its Greek counterpart.^[1][10] De Vaan reconstructs the Proto-Italic ordinal as *kʷatworto-.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to 1074, and Segura Munguía gives the same date for the noun “one of four equal parts”.^[3][12] In the scientific prose of Alfonso X it is both the ordinal and the fraction: the Lapidario (1250–1279) prescribes as much of a stone as un quarto de dragma “a quarter of a dram”.^[6]

Semantic evolution

Medieval astronomy used quartos for the divisions of the sky and of time.^[6] The sense “part of a house” appears at the beginning of the 17th century, at first for the part of a house where one family lived and then for a single room.^[3][13] Cervantes already speaks of a room of a palace, and in the first chapter of the Quijote plays on two senses when he says that Rocinante had more cuartos than a real: the coin worth four maravedís and the crack in a horse's hoof.^[14] Covarrubias in 1611 recorded the copper coin worth four maravedís and the punishment of quartering highwaymen, hacer cuartos.^[15] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined quarto as “a fourth part”, used always for the hours, and as the part of a house set aside for a person and his family.^[16] Terreros gave French appartement and chambre as its equivalents.^[17]

The Academy's 1884 edition still listed the room for a family, the coin and the four lines of a person's grandparents.^[18] The 2001 edition added “bedroom”, and the Canarian historical dictionary notes that until 1992 the Academy had recorded only the wider sense.^[19] In the plural, colloquial Spanish uses cuartos for money.^[20] In the Americas the word means money in the Dominican Republic, a prison cell in Peru and a car's parking light in Mexico, and in Colombia cuarto is a friend or companion.^[21][22]

Timeline

• 1074 – first record, as dated by Corominas.^[3]
• 1250–1279 – the Lapidario of Alfonso X uses quarto for a quarter of a dram.^[6]
• 1283 – an Alfonsine astrological text speaks of the twelve quartos into which the wise men divided the sky.^[6]
• 1512 – the first records from the Americas, in Puerto Rico, use cuarto for a measure of flour and wine.^[23]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the coin and the punishment hacer cuartos.^[15]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines both the fourth part and the part of a house.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. quartus”.^[18]
• 2001 – the Academy adds the sense “bedroom”.^[19]

Meanings

Adjective

1. fourth: coming after the third in a series: Llegó en cuarto lugar.^[4][1]
2. Being one of four equal parts of a whole; also as a noun, a quarter: un cuarto de queso.^[4][1]

Noun

1. A room of a house or flat: el cuarto de baño.^[4][1]
2. A bedroom: Se fue a su cuarto a dormir.^[4][1]
3. One of the four pieces of cloth of which a garment is made.^[4]
4. A quarter-hour, one of the four parts of an hour: Llegó a las cinco y cuarto.^[4][1]
5. One of the four parts into which the body of a four-legged animal or a bird is divided: los cuartos traseros.^[4][24]
6. (veterinary) A long, deep crack in the side of a horse's hoof.^[4]
7. Each of the lots, not necessarily four, into which a large piece of land is divided for selling its pasture.^[4][1]
8. (historical) The household servants of a king or queen.^[4]
9. (historical) A Spanish copper coin worth four maravedís; in the plural, colloquially, money.^[4][15][20]
10. (historical) Each of the four parts into which the body of an executed criminal was cut, for display on roads and in public places.^[4][15]
11. (historical) Each of the four watches into which sentries divided the night;^[1] (military) each of the four groups into which a guard is divided to share the duty.^[4][1]
12. A quart, the English and American unit of liquid measure.^[1]

Word family

• cuartear
• cuartero
• cuartilla
• cuartillo
• cuartón
• descuartizar
• encuartar
• cuartucho
• sacacuartos

Related words

• cuatro
• cuartel
• cuartana
• cuarteto
• Latin quartus
• Portuguese quarto

Usage notes

The phrase cuarto creciente names the second quarter of the Moon, when its visible face grows.^[22] In Asturias cuarto is also a dry measure for grain.^[20]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cuarto
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuarto
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. cuarto
5. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. cuarto
6. ^ a b c d e 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. cuarto
7. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 204
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 5334
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. quartus
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. quartus
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. quattuor
12. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 649
13. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. cuarto
14. ^ 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. 339
15. ^ a b c d Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1239
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 455
17. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 1, 565
18. ^ 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. 313
19. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. cuarto
20. ^ a b c Le Men Loyer, Janick (2002–2012), Léxico del leonés actual, 4 vols., León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro; electronic version, Universidad de León, p. s.v. cuarto
21. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. cuarto
22. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. cuarto
23. ^ 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. cuarto
24. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuarto