figura

Forms

figura f (plural figuras)^[1] A half-popular variant fegura appears in two late 14th-century manuscripts of Juan Ruiz, in the Poema de Alfonso XI and the Cancionero de Baena, and is still heard in Cantabria, Asturias and elsewhere in Spain.^[2][3] Medieval texts also spell it ffigura and once affigura.^[4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin figūra (“shape, form; image; manner”), a learned word in Spanish as in all the Romance languages.^[2][5][6][1] The Latin noun is derived from fingō (“to knead, mould, give shape to”).^[2][7][8] Wiktionary suggests that it was formed with a suffix -ūra cut out of -tūra, which would make it a doublet of fictūra (“formation”).^[1]

The same Latin word was borrowed as Portuguese figura, Catalan figura, Italian figura and French figure.^[9][10][11]

The Latin verb continues *fingō, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyǵʰ- (“to mould, form”), the root of Ancient Greek τεῖχος (teîkhos, “wall”) and of the English word dough.^[1][7] Gómez de Silva puts efigie, ficticio, fingir and paraíso in the same family.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest hit in the CDH is in Almerich's La fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy), where Edom and Jacob are read en figura de los pueblos “as a figure of the peoples”, a typological sense.^[13] Corominas dates the word from Berceo,^[2] and the BDELC gives 1220–50.^[5] Around 1215 the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca speaks of the saint's beauty and figura, her bodily appearance.^[13] In Alfonso X's Lapidario it is the outer shape of a stone (en figura quadrada) and also a sign that stands for something, such as the ram of Aries.^[14]

Semantic evolution

Corominas notes that the word has been frequent at every period, and refers to Erich Auerbach's monograph Figura for its semantic history in Romance.^[2] By 1283 Alfonso X's book of games used it for a diagram of a board, and his astronomical works for the drawing of the twelve celestial houses.^[14] Covarrubias in 1611 derived it from fingo and the work of the potter, glossed it as build, look and likeness, and noted that the characters played by actors were called figuras and that astrologers spoke of “raising a figure”.^[15] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as the form and arrangement of the parts of a thing, then specially the face, and a statue or painting of a body.^[16]

In 1884 the Academy added the court cards, a musical note and a character in a play and the actor who plays him.^[17] The current dictionary also has a person who stands out in a field, a role or function, a figure in dance or sport, and an illustration in a text.^[6] In Mexico the plural was used for people of bad appearance,^[18] and in the Spanish of the United States and Puerto Rico figura also means “figure, number”, from English figure.^[19][20]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – Almerich's Fazienda de Ultra Mar (13th-century copy) uses en figura de.^[13]
• c. 1215 – the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca uses it for bodily appearance.^[13]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo, the date Corominas gives.^[5][2]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses it for the shape of a stone and for the figures of the zodiac.^[14]
• late 14th century – the variant fegura in manuscripts of the Libro de buen amor.^[2]
• 1515 – the first record from the Americas, a chart of a coast in Tierra Firme.^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Latin fingo and records the actors' and astrologers' senses.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. figura”.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. The outer shape or form of a person or thing.^[6][1]
2. A person's build or figure, especially a good one: Hace ejercicio para mantener la figura.^[6]
3. A body of a person or animal, or another thing, represented in painting or sculpture; a figurine.^[6]
4. Something that represents or stands for something else; a symbol.^[6]
5. (card games) A court card.^[6]
6. An illustration accompanying a text.^[6]
7. A person who stands out in some activity; a leading figure, star: una figura del ciclismo.^[6]
8. (theatre) A part or role, a character in fiction, or the actor who plays it.^[6][1]
9. A movement or position in dance or in a sport.^[6]
10. (derogatory) A show-off.^[1]

Word family

• figurilla
• figurín
• figurón
• figurar
• desfigurar

Related words

• fingir
• efigie
• ficticio

Usage notes

Figura is also the third-person singular present of figurar.^[1] In the phrase Caballero de la Triste Figura (Don Quixote's title) the word keeps the old sense “appearance, countenance”;^[11] French translates it with a calque.^[11]

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 Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 894
3. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 259
4. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. figura
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. figura
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. figura
7. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. figūra
9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1557
10. ^ 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, 1017
11. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. figure
12. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. figura
13. ^ 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. figura
14. ^ a b c 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. figura
15. ^ 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. 844
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. figura
17. ^ 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. 495
18. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 639
19. ^ Moreno-Fernández, Francisco (2018), Diccionario de anglicismos del español estadounidense (Informes del Observatorio 037-01/2018SP), Cambridge, Mass.: Instituto Cervantes at Harvard University, p. 59
20. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. figura
21. ^ 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. figura