ganso

Forms

ganso m (plural gansos, feminine gansa, feminine plural gansas)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Gothic *𐌲𐌰𐌽𐍃 (*gans, “goose”), an unrecorded Gothic word.^[2][3][4][1] Its relatives are Old High German gans, Old English gōs, Old Norse gás, English goose, German Gans and Dutch gans, from Proto-Germanic *gans.^[2][1][5] Wiktionary takes this from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰh₂éns (“goose”), the source also of Latin ānser and Ancient Greek χήν (khḗn);^[1][6] Orel lists the same cognates.^[1][6]

Gamillscheg proposed a Gothic form with the ending -us, which Orel follows;^[6] Corominas rejects it, since the word is everywhere a feminine consonant stem, and accepts Meyer-Lübke's reconstruction without it.^[2] As the Gothic word was feminine, it may have entered Romance first as a feminine noun, from which the masculine was later made for the male bird.^[2] Only Spanish and Portuguese ganso have the word; the other Romance languages use the descendants of Late Latin auca, such as Catalan oca and Italian oca.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas first finds it in Nebrija's dictionary (c. 1495), which glosses ganso o ansar as Latin anser masculus, “male goose”.^[2][3][7] The HSMS archive has it in an incunable of about 1488, Pedro de Gracia Dei's La crianza y virtuosa doctrina.^[8] Corominas thinks it must be much older, and explains its rarity in medieval texts by ganso sounding rustic beside ánsar, which was supported by Latin.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias (1611) distinguishes domestic and wild geese and derives the word either from Latin anser with a g- added or, after Pliny, from a German word for a small goose.^[9] Autoridades (1726) prefers the derivation from anser, and already gives the figurative sense “tall, lanky man” and the ganso bravo, the wild goose.^[10] By 1884 the Academy recorded the senses “slow, lazy, careless person” and “rustic, ill-bred, clumsy person”, the old sense “tutor of children”, and the game correr gansos, like correr gallos.^[11] A running of geese at a festival in Lima is recorded in 1635.^[12]

Modern use adds a person who tries to be funny without success, and hacer el ganso “to clown about”.^[4][13] In Cuba the word is a slur for a homosexual man, in Ecuador it meant a greedy person, in Venezuela and Chile it names a cut of beef, and in New Mexican Spanish it is the turkey.^[4][14][1]

Timeline

• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses ganso o ansar as the male goose.^[2][7]
• 1570 – ganso in C. de las Casas's vocabulary.^[2]
• 1605 – first record in the Americas, in Nueva Galicia, of geese and cranes on a lake.^[12]
• 1611 – Covarrubias gives two etymologies.^[9]
• 1726 – Autoridades adds the sense “tall, lanky man” and the ganso bravo;^[10] gansarón appears too.^[10][2]
• 1884 – the Academy records the senses “slow, lazy person” and “tutor”.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A goose or gander: a large migratory waterfowl like a duck, with mainly grey plumage, of which some species are domestic; in the masculine also for the species.^[4][1]
2. A slow, lazy or careless person; also used as an adjective.^[4]
3. An ill-bred, clumsy, incompetent person; also used as an adjective.^[4]
4. A person who tries to be witty and funny without succeeding; a clown: No hagas el ganso delante de los invitados.^[4][1][13]
5. (historical) A tutor or pedagogue of children.^[4][11]
6. (Cuba, offensive) A homosexual man.^[4][14]
7. (Ecuador) A greedy person; also used as an adjective.^[4]
8. (Venezuela, Chile) A cut of beef from the loin or the top of the hindquarters.^[14]
9. (New Mexico) A turkey.^[1]

Word family

• gansada
• gansear
• gansarón

Related words

• ánsar
• oca
• English goose
• Portuguese ganso

Usage notes

Hacer el ganso is to do or say silly things to make people laugh.^[13] Ganso bravo is the wild goose.^[4][10] Correr el ganso or correr gansos was a popular game like correr gallos.^[4][11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 78
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ganso
4. ^ 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. ganso
5. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. gans
6. ^ a b c Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 126
7. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 356
8. ^ 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. ganso
9. ^ 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. 893
10. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 20
11. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 522
12. ^ 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. ganso
13. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ganso
14. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. ganso