flamenco

Forms

flamenco (feminine flamenca, masculine plural flamencos, feminine plural flamencas)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Dutch Vlaming (“Fleming, native of Flanders”).^[2][1][3][4] Gómez de Silva traces it to Middle Dutch Vlaminc or Vlaming, formed from the name of Flanders with the suffix -inc (“belonging to”).^[5]

The name of the bird, the flamingo, is in Corominas's view the same word.^[3] He explains it by the ruddy complexion of the Flemings, taken in Spain as typical of the northern peoples, which made the word an epithet for a red face, as in Catalan of the 13th century, and so a name for the red bird.^[3][4] Buffon, Wartburg and Bloch took the bird's name instead from Occitan flamenc, formed from Latin flamma (“flame”) with the suffix -enc, for its flame-coloured plumage;^[6] Corominas finds this unconvincing, since the Occitan word is recorded much later than Juan Manuel's flamengo.^[3] Gómez de Silva leaves both explanations open.^[5]

The Andalusian senses “Gypsy-like, flashy” and the name of the song and dance came, according to Corominas, from a sense “handsome, of fine bearing”, applied first to women with a fresh, rosy complexion.^[3][4] Schuchardt thought the word had meant “Gypsy”, because the Roma were believed to have reached Spain through Germany, a region confused in Spain with Flanders;^[6] Bénaben repeats that the Gypsies were said to have come from Flanders.^[3][6] Corominas rejects this because the sense is recorded only from 1870, and he dismisses as impossible a derivation from an Arabic phrase meaning “expelled peasant”.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest text with the word in the HSMS archive is the Gran conquista de Ultramar, in a manuscript of 1293–1300.^[7] Corominas's first record is the bird name flamengo in Juan Manuel, who died in 1348.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The ethnic sense and the bird lived side by side: Percyvall glossed the word in 1591 as both “a Fleming” and “a kinde of birde”, and Autoridades described the bird and quoted Huerta's Pliny of 1628, los Españoles Flamenco.^[8][9][3] In 1846 Domínguez also recorded the word as a jeering nickname, which he traced to the dislike of the Flemish courtiers of Charles V.^[10] The Catalan chronicler Desclot described James I as having a face vermella e flamenca “red and ruddy”, and after 1899 the Academy noted the use of flamenca for a buxom woman with a fresh, rosy skin.^[3][2]

The Andalusian sense “Gypsy-like, flashy, swaggering” is first recorded in 1870, in Demófilo;^[11] Juan Valera still called it new in 1897 (muy flamenco, como se dice ahora, no sé por qué “very flamenco, as they say now, I don't know why”), and the Academy admitted it in 1925.^[3][4] From it came cante flamenco and the noun for the song and dance, which English took in the 1880s.^[3][11] Other senses are a large knife in Andalusia and the Río de la Plata, “thin” in Puerto Rico and Honduras, and “angry” in Mexico and Puerto Rico.^[3][12][13] Among the Jews of Morocco flamengo meant a Jew of European origin.^[3]

Timeline

• 1293–1300 – the word appears in the manuscript of the Gran conquista de Ultramar.^[7]
• before 1348 – Juan Manuel names the bird flamengo.^[3][4]
• 1515 – first record in the Americas, of a Fleming who discovered the Azores.^[14]
• 1591 – Percyvall glosses the word as a Fleming and a bird.^[8]
• 1628 – Huerta's translation of Pliny gives flamenco as the Spanish name of the flamingo.^[9][3]
• 1870 – first record of the Andalusian sense “Gypsy-like, flashy”, in Demófilo.^[3][4]
• 1880s – English borrows flamenco, first for the Gypsy dance of Andalusia.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives the bird's name from its flame-coloured plumage.^[15]
• 1925 – the Academy admits the Andalusian sense.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Flemish: from or relating to Flandes; also as a noun, a Fleming.^[2][1]
2. (art) Of the style of painting that flourished in Flanders from the 15th to the 17th century: un retablo flamenco.^[2]
3. Of the popular Andalusian music and dance associated with the Gitanos, and of their performers: un cantaor flamenco.^[2][1]
4. Relating to the Flemish dialect.^[2]
5. (colloquial) Cheeky, insolent; in the phrase ponerse flamenco.^[2][1]
6. (colloquial) Robust and rosy-cheeked.^[2][16]
7. (Puerto Rico) Thin, skinny.^[2][13]

Noun

1. Flemish, the variety of Dutch spoken in Belgium.^[2]
2. flamenco, the song and dance.^[2][1]
3. A flamingo, a bird with very long bill, neck and legs and white and bright red plumage.^[2][1]
4. (Río de la Plata, dated) A large knife used by country people.^[12]

Word family

• flamenquismo
• flamenquilla
• aflamencado
• flamencología
• flamencólogo
• flamenquín

Related words

• Flandes
• English flamingo

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. flamenco
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 906
4. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. flamenco
5. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. flamenco
6. ^ a b c Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. flamenco
7. ^ a b Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. flamenco
8. ^ a b Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. s.v. flamenco
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 761
10. ^ 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. 814
11. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ 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. flamenco
13. ^ a b Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. flamenco
14. ^ 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. flamenco
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 499
16. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. flamenco