esquife

Forms

esquife m (plural esquifes)^[1] Old Spanish also had esquilfe, used by Juan Rodríguez del Padrón about 1440.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Catalan esquif, taken from Old Italian and dialectal Italian schifo, which comes from Lombardic *skif (“boat”).^[2][4][5] The final -e shows that the word passed through Catalan, where a final consonant was usual.^[2][6] In Catalan the word is frequent from the mid-15th century, first in 1433, with the derivative esquifat in 1305.^[2] Corominas thinks Spanish took it from the old Genoese dialect, where the word would have had the same form.^[2]

The Germanic word is scif, German Schiff and English ship, from Proto-Germanic *skipą (“ship”).^[2][7] Kroonen takes the Germanic word for an early loan of Latin scyphus (“drinking cup”),^[7] while Orel relates it to Baltic verbs meaning “to cut”.^[8]

Meyer-Lübke derived Spanish and Portuguese esquife directly from Old High German, but Corominas objects that a sea term would hardly come from High German, that the Old French form he cites is unknown, and that French esquif, not found before 1549, is Italian.^[2] Baist supposed a crossing with Latin scapha (“skiff”);^[2] Corominas finds that unnecessary and the likeness in meaning accidental.^[2] Covarrubias and Autoridades derived the word from that Latin word and its Greek source, and so did the Academy as late as 1899.^[9][10][11] Wiktionary calls equipo a doublet.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Pedro de Corral's Crónica del rey don Rodrigo (c. 1430): a man goes out to sea with his sister in an esquife, and she falls into the water.^[3] Pero Tafur (c. 1457) tells how some Biscayans took the esquife of a galley to rescue him.^[3] Corominas's first records are Alfonso de Palencia (1490) and Nebrija.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word named the small boat that a ship carries;^[9] Covarrubias (1611) describes it as a small craft that galleys and ships take along to pass from one to another or to reach land.^[9] Cervantes uses it in the Quijote, where the sailors lower the esquife into the sea.^[12][10] Domínguez (1846) describes the galleys' esquife as a double-ended boat with four or six oars.^[13]

In architecture esquife is a barrel vault, and bóveda esquifada is a vault like that of a cistern; the phrase comes from Italian volta a schifo, because the vault looks like an upturned boat.^[2][4] Today it also names a narrow racing boat for one rower.^[14]

Timeline

• c. 1430 – Pedro de Corral's Crónica del rey don Rodrigo has the first record.^[3]
• 1440 – Rodríguez del Padrón writes esquilfe in the Siervo libre de amor.^[3][2]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia's Universal vocabulario has it, Corominas's first record.^[2][4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin scapha for esquife de nave.^[15][16]
• 1544 – the first record from the Americas, in Paraguay.^[17]
• c. 1600 – first record of esquifada.^[2]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Latin scapha and Greek.^[9]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the Latin and Greek etymology.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. (nautical) A skiff: a small boat carried on a ship for going ashore and other tasks.^[5][1]
2. (architecture) A cylindrical barrel vault.^[5]
3. (sports) A narrow, light racing boat for one rower.^[14]

Word family

• esquifada
• esquifar

Related words

• equipar
• equipo
• Catalan esquif
• Italian schifo

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 756
3. ^ 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. esquife
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. esquife
5. ^ a b c 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. esquife
6. ^ Prat Sabater, Marta (2003), Préstamos del catalán en el léxico español, doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, p. 144
7. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 446
8. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 340
9. ^ a b c d Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 798
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 617
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 428
12. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. s.v. esquife
13. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 754
14. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. esquife
15. ^ 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. esquife
16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 350
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. esquife
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 463