espinoso

Forms

espinoso (feminine espinosa, masculine plural espinosos, feminine plural espinosas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish espinoso, inherited from Latin spīnōsus (“thorny, prickly”).^[2][3][4][1] Wiktionary also allows a Spanish formation from espina and the suffix -oso, which is how the Spanish Wiktionary explains it.^[1][5]

The same Latin adjective is Portuguese espinhoso, Galician espiñoso, Catalan espinós, French épineux, Italian spinoso and Romanian spinos.^[6][7] Houaiss derives the Portuguese word from espinho with its suffix, while noting that others take it straight from the Latin.^[8]

The Latin adjective is formed from spīna (“thorn”) with the adjective suffix -ōsus.^[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to a charter of 1166 in Oelschläger's list of first records.^[2][3] The Libro de Alexandre (c. 1230–1250) has it in the plain sense “full of thorns”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The sense “thorny, prickly”, said of plants, has been the main one throughout;^[11][12] Autoridades illustrates it with Laguna's Dioscorides, where the teasel is counted among the espinosas plantas.^[13] The figurative sense “arduous, dangerous, tangled” was recorded by the same dictionary, which says that an affair is called espinoso when it is hard to enter and to unravel.^[13] The Academy's later editions kept both senses, calling the second “metaphorical” in 1817 and “figurative” from 1884.^[11][12][4]

Terreros (1786–1793) already used espinoso as the name of a fish with spines on its back, the stickleback, and of a muscle.^[14] Gaspar y Roig listed the anatomical uses, such as the apófisis espinosas of the vertebrae.^[15] In Panama the masculine noun names a tree, the pochote.^[16]

Timeline

• 1166 – first record, in a charter.^[2][3]
• c. 1230–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre uses the adjective.^[10]
• 1573 – first record from the Americas, in the Río de la Plata, of thorny cacti and trees.^[17]
• 1591 – Percyvall glosses it as “thorny”, Latin spinosus.^[18]
• 1732 – Autoridades records the literal sense and the metaphorical “arduous, dangerous”.^[13]
• 1786–1793 – Terreros records it as the name of a spiny fish.^[14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Having thorns (espinas) or spines; thorny, prickly: Las ramas espinosas del rosal me arañaron.^[4][1]
2. (figurative) arduous, difficult or delicate, hard to deal with: Evitó responder a una pregunta tan espinosa.^[4][19]
3. (anatomy) Of or relating to a spine-like process, as the spinous processes of the vertebrae.^[20]

Noun

1. (zoology) The stickleback, a small fish with movable spines on its back.^[1][21]
2. (anatomy) The spinalis muscle (músculo espinoso).^[20]
3. (Panama) The pochote, a tree.^[16]

Related words

• espina
• espinazo
• espino
• Latin spīnōsus
• Portuguese espinhoso

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 746
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. espina
4. ^ 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. espinoso
5. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. espinoso
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 6270
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. spinōsus
8. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. espinhoso
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. spīnōsus
10. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. espinoso
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 389
12. ^ 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. 460
13. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 606
14. ^ a b Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 2, 101
15. ^ 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, 931
16. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. espinoso
17. ^ 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. espinoso
18. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 138
19. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. espinoso
20. ^ a b Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. espinoso
21. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. espinoso