durazno

Forms

durazno m (plural duraznos)^[1] Records of the Canary Islands from 1503 spell it durasno.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin dūracinus (“having hard berries or fruit”), an adjective applied to peaches and cherries whose flesh clings to the stone and to thick-skinned grapes.^{[3][4][5][1][6]} The Latin word is a compound of dūrus (“hard”) and acinus (“berry, grape”).^[6][1][4] Pliny already used it of peaches.^[6][7]

The same Latin word is Portuguese durázio, Galician durainzo, Italian duracino, Old French duraine and Dalmatian drukno, a kind of grape in the Romance of Veglia.^[8][9] Corominas notes that the word passed from Latin into Greek, which passed it on to Arabic and Turkish.^[3] Mozarabic had forms taken directly from Latin, such as durágnu, and others that came back through Arabic.^[3]

Other origins have been proposed.^[3] Keller thought the Latin adjective was derived from the name of the Illyrian town of Dyrrachium, today Durazzo;^[3] Corominas sees that connection rather as a popular etymology.^[3] In 1869 Dozy and Engelmann rejected a Greek or an Arabic source for the Spanish word, pointing to Pliny's Latin phrase, yet the Academy's dictionaries of 1884 and 1899 still derived it from a Greek name of the peach.^[10][11][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor (1330–1343, in a copy of about 1415) lists the fruit among others: muchas peras e duraznos, ¡qué çidras e qué mançanas! “many pears and peaches, what citrons and what apples!”^[13][3] Corominas thinks the poet, like Lope de Vega later, already used it for peaches in general.^[3] DEMel records the word earlier, in the Mozarabic documents of Toledo (1276) and as duraznos in a document of the chapter of Segovia from after 1296.^[14]

Semantic evolution

Laguna (1555) used durazno as the general name for the various kinds of peach, and so it is still used in Argentina, Chile, Peru, New Mexico, the Canaries and Andalusia.^[3] Autoridades (1732) still treated it as the basic word and melocotón as a particular kind; it explained the name by the hard flesh clinging to the stone.^[3][15] From 1817 the Academy defined it instead as a smaller variety of the peach.^[16] Moliner notes that the name is used loosely: for peaches in some places, for apricots in others.^[17]

Peaches reached the Americas early: preserved peaches are recorded in Puerto Rico in 1516, and in 1548 a writer in Santo Domingo had brought peach stones from Toledo.^[18] There durazno became the ordinary name of the tree and its fruit.^[5][19] It was borrowed into Classical Nahuatl as torazno and into Quechua as turasnu.^[1] In Argentina and Chile it has also become a colloquial adjective, “dim” or “stubborn”.^[19]

Timeline

• 1276 – DEMel's first record, in the Mozarabic documents of Toledo.^[14]
• after 1296 – duraznos in a document of the chapter of Segovia.^[14]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor, the first record in Corominas.^[13][3][20]
• 1380–1385 – Ferrer Sayol's Libro de Palladio on sowing peach stones.^[13]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija renders it persicum duracinum.^[21]
• 1503 – Tenerife's council fixes the price of durasnos.^[2]
• 1516 – first record in the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[18]
• 1519 – Fernández de Enciso compares the flesh of the mamey to that of the durazno.^[22]
• 1555 – Laguna uses it as the general name for the peach.^[3]
• 1732 – Autoridades: the tree and its fruit.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from Greek.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A variety of peach tree (duraznero).^[5]
2. The fruit of this tree, somewhat smaller than the common peach.^[5][23]
3. (Latin America) The general name of several trees of the peach kind, such as the melocotonero and the pérsico.^[5][19]
4. (Latin America) A peach, the fruit of these trees: De postre sirvieron duraznos en almíbar.^[5][19][1]
5. (informal) The buttocks.^[1]

Adjective

1. (Argentina, colloquial) Of a person, dim, slow-witted.^[19]
2. (Chile, colloquial) Of a person, stubborn;^[19] (Chile, Argentina) of a thing, hard or stiff.^[19]

Word family

• duraznero
• duraznillo

Related words

• duro
• Latin dūracinus
• Portuguese durázio

Usage notes

In Spain the fruit is usually called melocotón, and durazno is a particular variety; in most of Latin America durazno is the ordinary word.^[5][23][3] Durazno is also a department of Uruguay and its capital.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. durazno
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 537
4. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. durazno
5. ^ a b c d e f g 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. durazno
6. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2378
10. ^ Dozy, Reinhart; Engelmann, W. H. (1869), Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe, 2nd ed., Leyde: Brill, p. s.v. durazno
11. ^ 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. 403
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 373
13. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. durazno
14. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. durazno
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 352
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 339
17. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. durazno
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. durazno
19. ^ a b c d e f g Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. durazno
20. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. s.v. durazno
21. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 339
22. ^ Grupo IATEXT, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, AMERLEX: corpus of americanisms in early texts on the Americas (online database), p. s.v. durazno
23. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. durazno