fuelle

Forms

fuelle m (plural fuelles)^[1] Old Spanish texts also write fole and fuele, and huelle is recorded in Old Castilian and in Asturian.^[2][3] The noun was sometimes feminine in older Spanish (Santillana, Nebrija's fuelle pequeña, Quevedo's Buscón). The form fuella of the Toledo glossary and of López de Ayala grew out of this use.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin follis (“bellows; inflated skin; leather bag”), which the earliest Leonese charters write as Old Spanish folle.^[4][5][1] The same Latin word is Portuguese fole, Galician fol, Asturian fuelle, Italian folle, Romanian foale and Old French fol.^[3][6][1]

De Vaan finds that the meaning of the Latin word suggests a link with a Celtic stem seen in Old Irish ball (“member, body part”), but he gives it no further etymology.^[7] Wiktionary derives it, probably, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰolǵʰnis, a derivative of *bʰelǵʰ- (“to swell”), or else from a form built on *bʰel- (“to blow”).^[1] Gómez de Silva also traces it to an Indo-European root meaning “to blow; to swell”.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Leonese charters of the 10th century that Oelschläger collected, the word means “sack” or “wineskin”: folle zumach is “a sack of sumac”.^[4] The diphthongised form fuelle is first found in the Libro de Alexandre.^[4][2] The sense “bellows” appears in Alfonso X's Picatrix of 1256: metela enla fragua del ferrero. & solla los fuelles sobrella “put it in the smith's forge and blow the bellows on it”.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

Corominas dates the “bellows” sense, already Latin, from the Cortes of 1357 and Alfonso de Palencia; the Alfonsine record of 1256 is older.^[4][9] The older sense of a skin bag is still alive in Asturias and Galicia, where un fuelle de harina is a sack of flour, and the DLE keeps it as an Asturian sense: a skin used in mills for flour.^[4][5][11] The Fuero de Zamora of 1289 uses the word for an animal's skin: each household paid senos fuelles de coneyos “a rabbit skin each”.^[9]

The Diccionario de Autoridades described the bellows of smiths and of the organ and the small hand bellows of the home, and added two figurative senses: the creases of a badly sewn garment, and, jocularly, a telltale.^[12] It also gave the folding hood of a light carriage.^[13] The Academy's 1817 edition added a bank of clouds over the mountains, taken as a sign of wind.^[14] Later dictionaries recorded the leather bag of the Galician bagpipe, the expandable sides of bags and briefcases, the bellows of a camera and, colloquially, breath or stamina.^[5][15][1] In Argentina and Uruguay fuelle is a popular name for the bandoneon.^[5][16]

Timeline

• 922 – folle “sack, wineskin” appears in Leonese charters.^[4][17]
• 1230–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre has the form fuelle.^[4][2]
• 1256 – Alfonso X's Picatrix uses fuelles for the bellows of a forge.^[9][10]
• 1289 – the Fuero de Zamora uses it for a rabbit skin.^[9]
• 1357 – the Cortes of that year use the “bellows” sense.^[4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin follis for fuelle para soplar.^[18][19]
• 1535 – first record from the Americas, at Santa Marta.^[20]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the creases of a garment and the jocular sense “telltale”.^[12]
• 1817 – the Academy adds the clouds over the mountains that foretell wind.^[14]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology Latin follis.^[21]

Meanings

Noun

1. bellows: a device with folding leather sides that draws in air through a valve and blows it out through a nozzle in a set direction.^[5][1]
2. The leather bag of the Galician gaita.^[5][1]
3. A crease or pucker in a garment.^[5]
4. The folding hood of a carriage; the folding roof of a convertible.^[5][1]
5. A folding gusset in the side of a bag or briefcase that lets it expand; the bellows of a camera.^[5][15][1]
6. A bank of clouds over the mountains, usually a sign of wind.^[5]
7. (colloquial) Breath, lung capacity, stamina: Después de tres vueltas ya no tenía fuelle.^[5][1]
8. (colloquial) A telltale or informer.^[5][12]
9. (Asturias) A skin bag used in mills to hold flour.^[5]
10. (Argentina, Uruguay; colloquial) The bandoneón.^[5][16]

Word family

• follar
• afollar
• follado
• follón
• holleca

Related words

• holgar
• hollejo
• folículo
• Latin follis
• Portuguese fole

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. fuelle
3. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 2860
4. ^ 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, 969
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. fuelle
6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1586
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 319
9. ^ 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. fuelle
10. ^ a b 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. fuelle
11. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. fuelle
12. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 806
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 428
15. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. fuelle
16. ^ 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. fuelle
17. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 301
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 355
19. ^ 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. fuelle
20. ^ 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. fuelle
21. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 475