cuerda

Forms

cuerda f (plural cuerdas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin chorda (“string of a musical instrument; rope, cord”), which is from Ancient Greek χορδή (khordḗ, “gut, tripe; string made of gut”).^[2][3][4][1] The word means “rope, cord” in all the Romance languages, though a trace of the sense “gut” survives in Spanish cordilla.^[2] Other Romance languages kept traces of the classical word for rope, fūnis, but Plautus already uses the Latin word in the Romance sense “rope, cord”.^[2]

The same Latin word is Portuguese corda, Galician corda, Catalan corda, Occitan còrda, French corde, Italian corda and Romanian coardă.^[5][6] Wiktionary calls corda, the nautical word, a doublet.^[1]

The Greek word meant “guts, tripe”, then a string made of gut, especially of a lyre, already in the Odyssey.^[7] It probably goes back to Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰerH- (“bowel”), but its formation is unclear;^[1] Wiktionary compares Latin hernia, a link Beekes doubts.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy), where the ropes of the tents snap in the attack: Tanta cuerda de tienda ý veriedes quebrar “so many tent ropes you would see break there”.^[8][2][9]

Semantic evolution

The Fuero de Zorita speaks of a crossbowman with two strings for his crossbow, and the Libro de Alexandre of the strings of musical instruments.^[8] In the prose of Alfonso X it means a rope, a bowstring, a string of gut for instruments, the chord of an arc and a tendon of the body.^[10]

Covarrubias noted in 1611 that instrument strings were usually of sheep gut or of wire, that the sinews of the body were also called cuerdas, and he recorded tormento de cuerda “torture by the cord” and the phrases apretar la cuerda “to press hard” and dar cuerda “to give rope, not press a matter”, taken from anglers.^[11] He also connected acordar, cuerdo and cordura with the tuning of strings, an opinion of his time.^[11] The Academy's dictionary of 1843 added the slow match of artillery, a measure of eight and a half varas, the chain of a pocket watch and the chain gang of convicts sent to the presidios.^[12] In 1869 it added the apparent crest of a range of mountains, the sense from which cordillera was formed.^[13][2]

In the Americas cuerda is a land measure in Puerto Rico, of 3,929 square metres, and cuerda de leña a stack of firewood in Cuba; in several countries it is also the skipping game.^[14][15] In Mexico it names the thread of a screw, and in Bolivia and Peru, among young people, a group of friends.^[16] The English word cuerda, the land measure, comes from Spanish.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has cuerda de tienda “tent rope”.^[8][2]
• 1218–c. 1250 – the Fuero de Zorita, the first record in a text without a later copy, uses it for the string of a crossbow.^[8]
• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre uses it for the strings of musical instruments.^[8]
• 1254 – Alfonso X's Judizios de las estrellas uses it for strings of gut and for the chord of an arc.^[10]
• 1330 – first record of cordel, from Catalan.^[3]
• 1492 – the nautical phrase poner a la corda in the diary of Columbus, probably from Catalan or Portuguese.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin funis, lorum, fides and chorda.^[17]
• 1528 – the first record from the Americas, in the Río de la Plata.^[18]
• 1533 – in Cuzco, the knotted cords on which the Incas kept their accounts are called cuerdas.^[18]
• 1601 – first record of cordillera.^[3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes strings of gut and wire and the torture of the cord.^[11]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades adds the geometric chord.^[19]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin and Greek.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. rope, cord, string: a long, flexible body of twisted or braided threads, used for tying or hanging things.^[4][1]
2. The skipping game, played by jumping over a turning rope.^[4]
3. (music) A string of metal, nylon or other material that sounds by vibrating; in the plural, the strings of an orchestra.^[4][21]
4. (geometry) A chord, the straight line joining two points of a curve.^[1][10]
5. In pendulum clocks, each of the cords or chains that hold the weights.^[4]
6. The spring that drives a mechanism: un juguete de cuerda.^[4][1]
7. The crest line of a range of mountains.^[4]
8. The edge of a rock stratum visible on a mountainside.^[4]
9. A land measure equal to a fanega of sowing land, or a little more.^[4]
10. The normal height of a horse, seven cuartas or 1.47 m.^[4]
11. A measure of eight and a half varas.^[4]
12. A group of people with similar ideas or characters, as in ser de la misma cuerda.^[4][1]
13. (Puerto Rico) A land measure of 3,929 square metres.^[4][14]
14. (architecture) The springing line of a vault or arch.^[4]
15. (sports) A climbing rope used in gymnastics.^[4]

Word family

• cordaje
• encordar
• cordería
• cordilla
• cordillera
• cordal

Related words

• cordel
• cordón
• corda
• Latin chorda

Usage notes

Set phrases include cuerda de presos “a line of prisoners tied together for transfer”, cuerda dorsal “notochord”, instrumento de cuerda “string instrument” and dar cuerda “to wind up” a clock or toy.^[4][1][22] Cuerdas vocales are the vocal cords.^[23] Por bajo cuerda, for the standard por debajo de cuerda, means “secretly, by hidden means”.^[24] In the old germanía, cuerda was the escort of prisoners, and los de la cuerda the members of the criminal fraternity.^[25]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 273
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuerda
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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. cuerda
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. chorda
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 1615
7. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. cuerda
9. ^ 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. 830
10. ^ 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. cuerda
11. ^ 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. 543
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 213
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 229
14. ^ a b Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. cuerda
15. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 277
16. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. cuerda
17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 322
18. ^ 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. cuerda
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 683
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 317
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuerda
22. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. cuerda
23. ^ Cortés Gabaudan, Francisco (dir.), Dicciomed: Diccionario médico-biológico, histórico y etimológico, Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, https://dicciomed.usal.es, p. s.v. cuerda
24. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1999), Vocabulario de Puerto Rico, critical ed. by Humberto López Morales, Madrid: Arco/Libros (1st ed. 1937), p. 154
25. ^ Salillas, Rafael (1896), El delincuente español: el lenguaje, Madrid: Victoriano Suárez, p. 322