galeón

Forms

galeón m (plural galeones)^[1]

Etymology

Corominas takes it from French: it is borrowed from Old French galion, recorded at the end of the 13th century in Joinville, from galie (“galley”).^[2][3] He doubts that the suffix had augmentative force, since the earliest galleons could be rowed and small, and holds that the French word spread from there to the other Romance languages; galió, from 1583, may come from Spanish, but this is very uncertain.^[2] The Academy and Wiktionary explain it instead as an augmentative formed from Spanish galea + -ón, from the older name of the galera.^[4][1][5] Etymonline has the English word both from French and directly from Spanish.^[6]

The Old French noun goes back to Byzantine Greek γαλέα (galéa).^[2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest hit of the word, in Pero Tafur's Andanças e viajes (c. 1457), tells how the Venetians went out with forty galeones against the Duke of Milan.^[7] An earlier hit of the 15th century is the personal name Galeon (Galen) in a list of philosophers, not the word.^[7] DICCA-XV dates the word to 1497 and Corominas to 1528.^[8][2][3]

Semantic evolution

From the 1490s the royal letters of Ferdinand the Catholic mention galleons of Barcelona, Genoa and Guipúzcoa.^[7] In the Americas the word is recorded from 1534 in Santo Domingo, and in Puebla in 1538 a ship's master names his galleon Santa María de la Antigua.^[9] The word then came to mean the great ships of the Indies fleet: the Academy's 1899 edition defines the galleons as the large ships that sailed periodically from Cádiz to Cartagena de Indias and Portobelo.^[10] English took galleon in the 1520s, especially for the Spanish treasure ships and the warships that escorted the merchant fleet to South America.^[6]

In Andalusia the word also names a large room or shed used as a granary or store.^[4][5]

Timeline

• c. 1457 – Pero Tafur's Andanças e viajes has the plural galeones.^[7]
• 1492 – a royal letter mentions a galleon that robbed another ship.^[7]
• 1497 – DICCA-XV's first record.^[8]
• 1520s – English galleon, from French and Spanish.^[6]
• 1528 – Corominas's first record.^[2][3]
• 1534 – first record in the Americas, from Santo Domingo.^[9]
• 1899 – the Academy records the galleons sailing from Cádiz to Cartagena de Indias and Portobelo.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A galleon: a large sailing ship, like the galera but with three or four masts carrying mostly square sails, used for war and trade.^[4][1][11]
2. (historical) Each of the large ships that sailed periodically from Cádiz to certain ports of the New World.^[4][5]
3. (Andalusia) A large room or hall (nave) used as a granary or store for produce.^[4][5]

Related words

• galera
• galeota
• galeaza
• English galleon

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 34
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. galera
4. ^ a b c d e 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. galeón
5. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. galeón
6. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ 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. galeón
8. ^ 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. galeón
9. ^ 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. galeón
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 481
11. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. galeón