cuchillo

Forms

cuchillo m (plural cuchillos)^[1] Old Spanish wrote cuchiello, beside cochiello, cochillo, guchiello, cuchello and the Latinising cutello; the modern cuchillo appears beside them.^[2][3] García de Diego records Old Aragonese cuitiello, gochillo in Sobrarbe, guchillo in Aragon and Navarre and buchillo in La Mancha.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cultellus (“small knife”), a diminutive of culter (“knife; ploughshare”), and its Old Spanish form was cuchiello.^[5][6][1][2]

The same Latin word is Portuguese cutelo (older coitelo), Asturian cuchiellu, Catalan coltell, French couteau and Italian coltello.^[4][7][8][9] In Catalan the word has become literary or obsolete in most areas.^[10] In French the diminutive took the general sense “knife”, while the simple word survives as the technical term coutre “coulter”.^[9]

De Vaan connects culter with a root Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelh₂- (“to split, cleave”), as an instrument for cleaving; others explain it by dissimilation from a formation of Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut”).^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to 1219.^[5][12] Among the hits of the CDH, the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy) has the form guchiello: Herod killed himself „con .i. guchiello” “with a knife”.^[13] The Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250) punishes „Tod aquel que con foz espigas cogiere, o con cuchiello” “anyone who gathers ears of grain with a sickle or with a knife”.^[13]

Semantic evolution

In Alfonso X's General Estoria the word also stands for threat and danger, in a passage on living under foreign kings „contra cuchiello & catiuidad” “under the knife and in captivity”.^[14] Covarrubias in 1611 says that what harms someone is called his cuchillo, and records the proverb en casa del herrero cuchillo mangorrero “in the smith's house a knife with a poor handle”.^[15] The Diccionario de Autoridades has the same figurative sense, a person or thing that destroys others, and the hunting knife cuchillo de monte.^[16]

The Academy's later editions record transferred senses for things shaped like a blade or a triangle: by 1817 the triangular gore of a garment and the right to govern and punish, by 1843 the triangular staysails of a ship, by 1869 the falcon's wing feathers, and by 1917 the roof truss.^{[17][18][19][20]} Moliner adds a cold draught through a crack.^[21] In the Canaries cuchillo has named a narrow, sharp ridge since 1520.^[22]

In the Spanish Caribbean the word names a shoemaker's knife, in Venezuela a small electric freshwater fish, and in Cuba the point where two partly parallel streets meet; in Mexico it is a white fish of Lake Chapala.^[23][24] Spanish lent it to Tagalog and Cebuano as kutsilyo and to Mapudungun as kucijo.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar has the form guchiello (in a 13th-century copy).^[13]
• 1219 – first record, as dated by Corominas.^[5]
• c. 1237 – Berceo, in the Sacrificio de la misa: „el cuchiello en puño, de su logar sacado”, of a knife drawn to sacrifice a son.^[25][13]
• 1280 – the General Estoria uses the word for danger and strife.^[14]
• 1512 – first record in the Americas, in a list of goods in Puerto Rico.^[26]
• 1520 – a Canarian notarial record uses cuchillo for a narrow ridge.^[22]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the proverb en casa del herrero cuchillo mangorrero.^[15]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary adds the gore of a garment and the right to govern and punish.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology Latin cultellus.^[27]

Meanings

Noun

1. knife: a cutting tool with a single-edged metal blade and a handle: Pásame el cuchillo de la mantequilla.^[6][1]
2. Each of the lower tusks of a wild boar.^[6][21]
3. A triangular gore or insert sewn into a garment to widen it; mostly plural.^[6][21]
4. Each of the two triangular pieces that join the leg and the foot of a stocking.^[6]
5. (historical) The right or jurisdiction to govern, punish and enforce the laws.^[6][21]
6. Anything cut or ending in an acute angle, such as a board cut on the slant or a triangular plot of land.^[6]
7. (architecture) A triangular room forced by an irregular plan.^[6]
8. (falconry) Each of the six wing feathers of a falcon next to the cuchillo maestro.^[6][20]
9. (construction) A truss: a frame of timber or iron set upright on supports to carry a roof or a bridge deck.^[6][28]
10. (Cuba) The point where two streets that run partly parallel meet.^[6][23]
11. (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico) A shoemaker's knife.^[23][29]
12. (Venezuela) A small freshwater fish that gives electric shocks (genus Gymnotus).^[23]

Word family

• cuchilla
• cuchillada
• cuchillazo
• cuchillero
• cuchillería
• acuchillar

Related words

• Latin cultellus
• Portuguese cutelo
• Italian coltello

Usage notes

Pasar a cuchillo is to put to the sword, to kill the people of a place taken by force.^[1] The proverb survives as en casa de herrero, cuchillo de palo “in the smith's house, a wooden knife”, of things lacking where they should most abound.^[1][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 155
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cuchillo
4. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2023
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuchillo
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. cuchillo
7. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1075
8. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. cuchiellu
9. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. couteau
10. ^ 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, 842
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. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 183
13. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. cuchillo
14. ^ 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. cuchillo
15. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 540
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 677
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 261
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 212
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 227
20. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 491
21. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuchillo
22. ^ 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. cuchillo
23. ^ a b c d Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. cuchillo
24. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 327
25. ^ 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. 827
26. ^ 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. cochillo
27. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 316
28. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. cuchillo
29. ^ Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. cuchillo