cuervo

Forms

cuervo m (plural cuervos)^[1] Medieval texts usually write cueruo or cuervo with ⟨v⟩, as do Alfonso de Palencia, Nebrija and most passages of Juan Ruiz, but cuerbo also occurs in one manuscript of the Libro de buen amor.^[2][3] The Asturian of Lena has cuergo.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin corvus (“raven”), and the Old Spanish word had the same form, often written ⟨cueruo⟩.^[2][5][6][1] The stressed vowel of the Latin word, a short o, appears as the diphthong ⟨ue⟩ in Spanish and in Asturian cuervu, while Portuguese corvo and Galician corvo keep ⟨o⟩.^[7][4][8]

The same Latin word is Catalan corb, Old French corp, Italian corvo and Romanian corb.^[7][2][9] French corbeau goes back instead to a diminutive of a Latin variant with /b/, which replaced the older word.^[10]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *korwos, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱorh₂wós.^[1][11] De Vaan notes that words beginning in ⟨kr-⟩ for crows and ravens are found across the Indo-European languages and are plainly imitative, and that the Latin formation, with the suffix ⟨-vus⟩ of colour adjectives, has no exact match outside Italic.^[11] The OLD also calls it probably imitative, and compares cornīx (“crow”) and Ancient Greek κόραξ (kórax, “raven”).^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas found the word first as a personal name in a document of 1075, and as a common noun in Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor (1328–1335).^[2][5] The CDH has earlier records: in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy) Noah sends out the raven from the ark: enbio el cuervo por saber si trobaria seco “he sent the raven to find out whether it would find dry land”.^[13][14] The Poridat de las poridades (c. 1250) compares an evil-doer to a raven.^[13]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's Lapidario already uses the word for the southern constellation Corvus, and Abraham of Toledo's Moamín (c. 1250) has cuervos marinos for a water bird.^[15][13] Autoridades describes the raven as a carrion bird that can imitate human speech, and lists the constellation and the cuervo marino as separate senses.^[16][17] In 1843 the Academy recorded the proverb cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos, said of favours repaid with ingratitude, and the phrase la ida del cuervo, said of someone one hopes will not come back, after the raven that left Noah's ark.^[18] Today cuervo marino is the cormorant, a word Spanish took from French in the 20th century.^[19][5]

In the Americas the word was used early: the first record there is from Tierra Firme in 1513.^[20] In Argentina and Uruguay it names the turkey vulture, and in Uruguay also, disparagingly, a football referee.^[6][21] In Chile and elsewhere it was a scornful name for a priest, and especially for a friar who traded in sacred things.^[22] In Argentina cuervo is also a supporter or player of the San Lorenzo de Almagro football club, a sense the dictionaries record from 2000 on.^[23][21]

Timeline

• 1075 – the word appears as a personal name in a document.^[2]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (in a 13th-century copy) has the raven of Noah's ark.^[13]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario names the constellation cueruo.^[15]
• 1328–1335 – Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor, Corominas's first record of the common noun.^[2][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin corvus as its equivalent.^[24]
• 1513 – the first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[20]
• 1571 – Alonso de Molina's Spanish–Nahuatl dictionary gives the Nahuatl names of the raven and the cuervo marino.^[25]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades describes the bird and derives the word from Latin corvus.^[16]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary records the proverb cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos.^[18]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology “Del lat. corvus” for the first time.^[26]

Meanings

Noun

1. (zoology) The raven (Corvus corax), a large black carrion bird with a thick, strong bill; loosely, a crow: Un cuervo graznaba sobre las peñas.^[6][1][19]
2. (Argentina, Uruguay) The turkey vulture (aura).^[6][21]
3. (Uruguay, colloquial, derogatory) A football referee.^[21]
4. (Chile and elsewhere, colloquial, derogatory) A priest, especially one who trades in sacred things.^[22]
5. (Argentina, colloquial) A supporter or player of the San Lorenzo de Almagro football club; also as an adjective, cuervo, cuerva.^[21][23]

Word family

• corvato
• corvina

Related words

• corneja
• cormorán
• Latin corvus
• Portuguese corvo

Usage notes

Cuervo marino is an old name for the cormorán.^[19][16] The proverb cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos is said when a kindness is repaid with ingratitude.^[19][18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 277
3. ^ 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. 157
4. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1929
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuervo
6. ^ a b c d 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. cuervo
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1007
9. ^ 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, 922
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
11. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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. cuervo
14. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cuervo
15. ^ 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. cuervo
16. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 691
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. cuervo
18. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 214
19. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuervo
20. ^ 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. cuervo
21. ^ a b c d e Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. cuervo
22. ^ a b Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 429
23. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (DHLE), https://www.rae.es/dhle, p. s.v. cuervo
24. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. cuervo
25. ^ Grupo IATEXT, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, AMERLEX: corpus of americanisms in early texts on the Americas (online database), p. s.v. cuervo
26. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 319