flanco

Forms

flanco m (plural flancos)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French flanc (“side, flank”), which comes from Frankish *hlanka.^[2][3][1] The DLE names the Old High German form instead, Old High German hlanca (“hip”).^[4] Corominas notes that the sense of this word was properly “joint”, as in German Gelenk (“joint”), and adds Old Norse hlekkr (“link of a chain”).^[2][3] The word came into Spanish as a term of warfare, heraldry and fortification, and it is missing from Covarrubias.^[2] Oudin still renders the French word with costado and ijada.^[2]

French has the word from 1080; it was probably reshaped from Old French flanche.^[5] The Frankish word goes back to Proto-Germanic *hlankaz (“flexible, slender”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *kleng- (“to bend”), though it has no certain cognates outside Germanic.^[1][6] Orel groups with it Old English hlenca (“link”) and Old Saxon hlanka (“hip, thigh”),^[7] and Köbler hlanc (“lean, thin”), the source of the English word lank.^[8][1]

The same French word is Portuguese flanco,^[9] and the Germanic word also gave Italian fianco.^[1][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest sure record in the CDH is in Francisco Manuel de Melo's history of the Catalan war (1645), of a fort: dio fuego a un pedrero grueso alojado en uno de los flancos del fuerte “he fired a heavy stone-mortar placed in one of the flanks of the fort”.^[11] Corominas's first record is later, Mateo Ibáñez around 1700; the Autoridades quotes his translation of Quintus Curtius: No estando la vanguardia más fortificada que los flancos, ni los flancos que la retaguardia “the vanguard being no more fortified than the flanks, nor the flanks than the rearguard”.^[2][12] The DTME dates the word in Spanish from 1440.^[13]

Semantic evolution

The verb flanquear is recorded before the noun, in Carlos Coloma in 1625.^[2] The Autoridades defined flanco first as the part of a bastion that forms a re-entrant angle with the curtain and a salient one with the face, then as the side of anything, such as a squadron, and in the plural as the sides of a ship; it also recorded the heraldic flanco del escudo.^[12] For Corominas this military, heraldic and fortification use was long the only proper one.^[2]

The Academy's dictionary of 1869 added the general sense, either of the two sides of a body seen from the front, and the figurative “weakest side of a person or thing”, as in atacar por el flanco.^[14] Gaspar y Roig recorded an anatomical sense, the side of the abdomen between the pelvis and the false ribs,^[15] which medicine still uses.^[13] In the Americas the word appears in Havana in 1761, of a fortress with sus baluartes en cada ángulo y sus flancos regulares.^[16]

Timeline

• 1645 – Francisco Manuel de Melo writes of the flanks of a fort.^[11]
• c. 1700 – Mateo Ibáñez, the first record in the DCECH.^[2][3]
• 1725 – the heraldic derivative flanquís, in Avilés.^[2]
• 1761 – first record in the Americas, in Havana.^[16]
• 1869 – the Academy adds the general sense and the figurative “weakest side”.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology, from French flanc.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. Either of the two lateral parts of a body seen from the front; a flank or side: Sintió un dolor en el flanco izquierdo.^[4][1]
2. (nautical) The side of a ship.^[4]
3. (military) The side of a military force, or the area next to it.^[4][18]
4. (fencing) The part of the fencer's side under the arm that holds the weapon.^[4]
5. (fortification) The part of a bastion that forms a re-entrant angle with the curtain and a salient angle with the face.^[4][12]
6. (fortification) Either of the two walls that join the faces of a bastion to the fortified enclosure.^[4]
7. (anatomy) The region of the abdomen between the hypochondrium and the iliac fossa.^[13]

Word family

• flanquear
• flanquís
• flanqueo

Related words

• French flanc
• Italian fianco

Usage notes

In heraldry flanco del escudo is each side of the shield, a third of its width; in fortification a flanco retirado is a bastion's flank covered by an orillon.^[4][12]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 908
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. flanco
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. flanco
5. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. flanc
6. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter
7. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
8. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 3272
10. ^ 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, 168
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
12. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 761
13. ^ a b c Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. flanco
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 362
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, 1017
16. ^ a b 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. flanco
17. ^ 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
18. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. flanco