fango

Forms

fango m (plural fangos)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Catalan fang (“mud”), a very popular word in Catalan, recorded there from the 13th century.^[2][3][4][1] Corominas thinks it probably came through Aragon, or as a term of carriage and transport, as the compound parafango “mudguard” suggests; he rules out Occitan and Italian as sources, and its total absence from Galician-Portuguese confirms that it is a newcomer in Castilian.^[2] The Marqués de Santillana already has a feminine form, copied from Provençal.^[2] Prat Sabater counts it among the Catalanisms of Germanic origin.^[5]

The Catalan word is of Germanic origin, akin to Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐌽𐌹 (fani, “mud”), Old English fen (“marsh”) and Old High German fenna (“marsh”).^[2][3][6][7] The Gothic word accounts for Occitan fanh and, Corominas says, for French fange, but not for the ⟨g⟩ of the Catalan word and of Italian fango.^[3][2] Corominas rejects Brüch's adjective *fanigs (“muddy”), accepted by the REW, and García de Diego's crossing with ciénago.^[2] He considers an unrecorded Germanic *fang, matching a Sanskrit word for “mud”, and finally prefers the influence of Catalan fanga (“spade”) and fangar (“to dig with a spade”), from Latin vanga (“spade”).^[2][3][8] García de Diego now starts from a form *fanicum, made from the Gothic word as *coenicum was from coenum (“mud”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

DICCA-XV records the word in a Castilian text of 1470 from the Crown of Aragon, earlier than the corpus records Corominas knew.^[10] The CDH has it in a text of the Cancionero de Juan Fernández de Íxar (a1424–1520), on an animal that never leaves its den while it rains so as not to dirty itself del fango “with the mud”, and in Jerónimo de Urrea's 1549 translation of the Orlando furioso: con el agua y el fango hasta su pecho “with the water and the mud up to his chest”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The word stayed rare in Castilian for a long time: it is missing from Nebrija, Covarrubias and Autoridades.^[2] Terreros lists it as an old word for lodo and refers to parafango, and the Academy admitted it only in 1817, as the sticky mud taken from ditches and wells or formed on roads by standing water.^[2][12][13] The early examples Pagés cites are from Espronceda, already in the figurative sense.^[2] In the Aragonese writer Oliván (1849) it is a farming term.^[2] Domínguez gave the figurative sense, everything impure and immoral that degrades a person, in 1846–1847.^[14] This sense of degradation and disgrace now predominates.^[2][4] The derivatives fangal “quagmire” and fangoso “muddy” are recorded from 1817.^[3] In medicine fango is also mud used for therapy and cosmetics.^[15]

Timeline

• 1470 – the first record in DICCA-XV.^[10]
• a1424–1520 – the Cancionero de Juan Fernández de Íxar.^[11]
• 1549 – Jerónimo de Urrea's translation of the Orlando furioso.^[11]
• 1598 – Cristóbal de Rojas's treatise on fortification names fango among the kinds of ground.^[11]
• 1765–1783 – Terreros lists it, the first record according to Corominas.^[2][3]
• 1782 – the first record from the Americas, in Buenos Aires.^[16]
• 1817 – the Academy admits fango, fangal and fangoso.^[2][3][13]
• 1846–1847 – Domínguez records the figurative sense.^[14]
• 1849 – Oliván uses it as a farming term.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. mud, mire: sticky mud formed from earthy sediment where water stands: Las ruedas del carro se hundieron en el fango.^[4][1][17]
2. (figurative) vilification, degradation; the disgrace cast on someone: arrastrar un nombre por el fango.^[4][17]
3. (figurative) A state of indignity or dishonour in which someone lives.^[17][18]
4. (medicine) Mud used for therapeutic or cosmetic purposes.^[15]

Word family

• fangal
• fangoso
• enfangar
• parafango

Related words

• Catalan fang
• Italian fango
• French fange

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 o Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 850
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. fango
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. fango
5. ^ Prat Sabater, Marta (2003), Préstamos del catalán en el léxico español, doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, p. 82
6. ^ Feist, Sigmund (1939), Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der gotischen Sprache, 3rd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 95
7. ^ Lehmann, Winfred P. (1986), A Gothic Etymological Dictionary, based on the third edition of Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der gotischen Sprache by Sigmund Feist, Leiden: Brill, p. 136
8. ^ 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, 876
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2677
10. ^ 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. fango
11. ^ 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. fango
12. ^ 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, 147
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 410
14. ^ a b 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. 793
15. ^ 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. fango
16. ^ 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. fango
17. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. fango
18. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. fango