garrobo

Forms

garrobo m (plural garrobos)^[1]

Etymology

The DLE gives no etymology for the name of the Central American lizard, which it lists as a separate headword from the obsolete word for the carob tree (see Usage notes).^[2] The dictionaries of Batres Jáuregui, Malaret and Santamaría and Moliner describe the animal, under the old scientific name Lacerta horrida, without explaining its name.^[3][4][5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Batres Jáuregui's Guatemalan dictionary of 1892 describes the garrobo as a “nauseating” reptile that lives on river banks, in old walls and even in the roofs of ruined houses.^[3] Alemany's dictionary of 1917 repeats the description for Central America.^[7] In literature the CDH's first record is Miguel Ángel Asturias's Leyendas de Guatemala, which names garrobos among the animals of the forest.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Santamaría (1942) calls the garrobo the male of the iguana, differing only in its brighter colours and larger crest, and protests that there is nothing horrid or nauseating about it; he records it from Tehuantepec to Panama.^[5] He also gives the figurative sense “a thin, leathery person”, the Tabasco phrase estar hecho un garrobo “to be very thin and run down”, and the Honduran tener ánimo de garrobo “to be brave and reckless”.^[5] A Central American saying mocks someone who has been fooled: así se cogen los bobos, con manteca de garrobo.^[4] The DAMER identifies the animal as the spiny-tailed iguana Ctenosaura similis, from south-eastern Mexico to Costa Rica, and adds the senses “lazy man” in Guatemala and Honduras and “a long loaf” in El Salvador.^[9] The lizard is also eaten: a Salvadoran newspaper of 1997 mentions consomé de garrobo.^[8]

Timeline

• 1892 – Batres Jáuregui describes the reptile in his Guatemalan dictionary.^[3]
• 1917 – Alemany enters it as a Central American reptile.^[7]
• 1930–1948 – Asturias names it in the Leyendas de Guatemala.^[8]
• 1942 – Santamaría records the figurative senses and phrases.^[5]
• 2010 – the DAMER records it from south-eastern Mexico to Costa Rica.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. (Central America) A large dark lizard like the iguana, up to about 1.6–1.8 metres long, with a crest from the neck to the middle of the tail: the black spiny-tailed iguana (Ctenosaura similis), found from Mexico to Panama.^[2][9][1]
2. (Central America) A smaller, darker relative of the common iguana with a similar crest.^[9]
3. (Central America) A caiman.^[1]
4. (Guatemala, Honduras) A lazy man.^[9]
5. (El Salvador) A long loaf of bread.^[9]
6. (Mexico, figurative, colloquial) A thin, leathery person: Con tanta fiebre se quedó hecho un garrobo.^[5]

Related words

• algarrobo
• algarroba

Usage notes

The DLE has a second, obsolete garrobo, the same as algarrobo, the carob tree.^[2] It is old: a charter of 1253 marks a boundary at a garrovo, Seville documents of 1283 have garrouo, and Nebrija (1495) glosses garrovo arbol with Latin siliqua.^[8][10] Oviedo and Las Casas used it for American trees that reminded them of the carob, and Oviedo's garrobos of Santo Domingo (1551) give good firewood.^[8][11] Autoridades sends the reader to algarrobo, and the Academy marked it as antiquated from 1843 on.^[12][13][14] In the Canaries garrobo and garrofo were still names of the carob tree in Viera y Clavijo's time.^[15] Corominas derives algarroba from Arabic and notes a variant garrofa in Murcia, Salamanca and Catalonia.^[16] In Salamanca an adjective garrobo means “coarse, uncouth” or “sly”.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. garrobo
3. ^ a b c Batres Jáuregui, Antonio (1892), Vicios del lenguaje y provincialismos de Guatemala, Guatemala: Encuadernación y Tipografía Nacional, p. 298
4. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 432
5. ^ a b c d e Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 20
6. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. garrobo
7. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 821
8. ^ 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. garrobo
9. ^ a b c d e f Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. garrobo
10. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. garrobo
11. ^ 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. garrobo
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 29
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 361
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 525
15. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. garrobo
16. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. algarroba
17. ^ Lamano y Beneite, José de (1915), El dialecto vulgar salmantino, Salamanca: Tipografía Popular, p. 471