escarabajo

Forms

escarabajo m (plural escarabajos)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish escaravayo, inherited from Vulgar Latin *scarafaius, a variant of Latin scarabaeus (“beetle”).^[2][3][1] Corominas explains the Castilian ending as a change of suffix: the original form, which survives in Leonese, was taken for a word in -ajo (from Latin -āculum), a suffix that had a dialectal form in -ayo.^[2][3] Old Spanish also had escaravaco, in the Libro de los gatos of about 1410.^[2] The DLE gives the Vulgar Latin form as scarabaius, and García de Diego proposed a diminutive *scarabaeculus.^[4][5]

The same Vulgar Latin base is continued by Italian scarafaggio, Old Occitan escaravai and Romansh scarvatg, while Portuguese escaravelho, Galician escaravello, Catalan escarabat and French escarbot have other suffixes.^[2][6][7] Other forms are Asturian escarabayu, Aragonese escarabaxo and Ladino escarabato.^[8][1][2]

Meyer-Lübke took the Vulgar Latin form for a dialectal Italic variant of the Latin word, and forms in medieval Latin glossaries support it;^[6] Ernout and Meillet explained it instead as a cross with an Oscan word for the hornet, which Corominas thinks much less likely.^[2][6] The origin of the Latin word itself is unclear: the Greek form often given as its source is not found in Greek, which has only Ancient Greek κάραβος (kárabos, “horned beetle; crayfish”).^[2][9][10] Wiktionary considers it perhaps a foreign word, related with a movable s- to the Greek noun.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is escaravaio in a 13th-century biblical manuscript of the Escorial, where it translates Latin crabrones “hornets”, a confusion between the two insects that he finds natural.^[2] Alfonso X's General estoria (c. 1275) has a similar gloss: aun dizen otros que scrabones son escarauaios “others also say that scrabones are beetles”.^[11][12]

Semantic evolution

Around 1400 the glossaries of the Escorial and of the Palace translate scaravajo by Latin scarabaeus, and Nebrija (c. 1495) already distinguishes the escaravajo pelotero, which rolls balls of dung.^[2][13] In 15th-century satirical verse the beetle is a byword for dirt and blackness: Villasandino calls a rival suzio como escaravajo “filthy as a beetle”.^[12] Covarrubias (1611) wrote at length on the Egyptian worship of the beetle and Aesop's fable of the eagle and the beetle.^[14] Autoridades (1732) recorded the figurative sense of a small, dark, ill-favoured person, and later dictionaries added a flaw in cloth, a cavity in a cast cannon and, in the plural, badly formed letters.^{[15][16][17][4]} In the Americas a 1548 text from Santo Domingo applies it to the luminous cocuyo.^[18] Today it is also the popular name of the Volkswagen Beetle.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – escaravaio in a biblical manuscript of the Escorial.^[2][3]
• c. 1275 – Alfonso X's General estoria uses escarauaios.^[11][12]
• c. 1410 – the Libro de los gatos has the variant escaravaco.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija lists the escaravajo pelotero.^[2][13]
• 1548 – first record in the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias tells the fable of the eagle and the beetle.^[14]
• 1732 – Autoridades records the sense “small, ill-favoured person”.^[15]
• 1817 – the Academy adds the flaw in cloth and in cannon.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. (entomology) The dung beetle, a coleopteran (coleóptero) insect that feeds on dung and rolls it into balls in which it lays its eggs.^[4]
2. beetle: any of various beetles with an oval body and short legs.^[4][1][19]
3. A flaw in a fabric in which the weft threads are not straight.^[4][19]
4. (colloquial) A small, ill-favoured person.^[4][15]
5. (military) A small cavity left inside a cannon by a flaw in the mould or the metal.^[4]
6. (colloquial, in the plural) Badly formed, crooked letters; scrawl (garabato).^[4][19]
7. The Volkswagen Beetle car.^[1]

Word family

• escarabajear
• escarabajeo
• escarabajuelo

Related words

• Latin scarabaeus
• Italian scarafaggio
• English scarab

Usage notes

Common compounds are escarabajo pelotero “dung beetle”, escarabajo de la patata “Colorado potato beetle”, escarabajo rinoceronte “rhinoceros beetle” and escarabajo sanjuanero, a cockchafer.^[4][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 675
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. escarabajo
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. escarabajo
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 5954
6. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7658
7. ^ 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. 3, 481
8. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. escarabayu
9. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ 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. escarabajo
12. ^ 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. escarabajo
13. ^ a b 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. escarabajo
14. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 762
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 555
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 377
17. ^ Gaspar y Roig (eds.) (1853–1855), Biblioteca ilustrada de Gaspar y Roig: Diccionario enciclopédico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Imprenta y Librería de Gaspar y Roig, p. 1, 902
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. escarabajo
19. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. escarabajo