gato

Forms

gato m (plural gatos, feminine gata, feminine plural gatas)^[1] A Navarrese charter of about 1180 spells the plural gaths.^[2]

Etymology

The word for the cat is inherited from Old Spanish gato, inherited from Late Latin cattus (“cat”), a word of uncertain origin.^[3][4][5][1] The same word is Portuguese gato, Galician gato, Catalan gat, French chat and Italian gatto.^[6][1] The Romance forms go back either to the form with /k/, in most of France, or to a variant gattus, in the far south of France, the Iberian Peninsula and Italy.^[3]

The ancient world knew only the wild cat, called Latin fēlēs.^[3] The first records of the Latin word and of the feminine catta, in the 4th century in Palladius, the Vulgate and Vegetius, still refer to it; by about 600 the word clearly means the domestic cat, and Isidore of Seville connects it, impossibly, with the catching of mice or with Spanish catar “to look”, because of the cat's sharp sight at night.^[3][4] Similar words are found in Byzantine Greek, Slavic, Semitic, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Germanic and Celtic, but Corominas doubts that any of them is older than the Latin.^[3] Thurneysen and Ernout–Meillet inclined, with many reservations, to a Celtic origin;^[7] Sofer and Walde–Hofmann suspected, like the zoologists, that both the animal and its name came from Africa, where similar forms exist in Nubian and Berber.^[3][7] Corominas himself suggests the word may have begun as a spontaneous call to summon or chase the animal.^[3] Corriente, Pereira and Vicente trace the Latin word to Aramaic.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds the word in a charter of 967 in Oelschläger's list of first records.^[3][4] In a Castilian text it first occurs in the fueros of the 13th century, which fine the killing of a cat (Del que matare gato, Fuero de Zorita) or throwing a dead cat into the street (Fuero de Cáceres).^[9]

Semantic evolution

The feminine gata is recorded from about 1300, when it also named a siege engine, as the Latin word already did in Vegetius.^[3][4] The tool senses grew from the animal: the Academy's 1884 dictionary has an iron tool for gripping wood, used to put hoops on casks, and the modern dictionary adds the jack for lifting heavy weights and the carpenter's clamp.^[10][5] The Autoridades (1734) records a purse made of cat skin, then any money bag, and the sneak thief, quoting Quevedo.^[11] Corominas also finds the sense “thief” in Tirso and Quevedo, and “hypocrite” in Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor.^[3]

The phrase a gatas “on all fours” is recorded from about 1550.^[3][4] From 1571 it also meant “with difficulty, barely”, a sense still alive in Argentina.^[3][4] In Spain gato is a colloquial name for a person from Madrid.^[5][1] In the Americas it has many senses: a servant (Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, derogatory), noughts and crosses (Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile), a folk dance of Argentina and Uruguay, and a person with light eyes (Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Ecuador).^[12][13]

Timeline

• 967 – a charter in Oelschläger's list.^[3][4]
• c. 1180 – the plural gaths in a Navarrese charter.^[2]
• 1218–c. 1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes fines the killing of a cat.^[9]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario describes cats running after a mouse.^[14][9]
• c. 1300 – gata as the name of a siege engine.^[3][4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin catus and feles.^[15]
• 1512 – the first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[16]
• c. 1550 – a gatas “on all fours”, in Lope de Rueda.^[3]
• 1734 – the Autoridades records the money bag and the sneak thief.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary records the cooper's tool.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cat, the domestic animal of the cat family; the masculine is used for the species, gata for the female.^[5][1]
2. (colloquial) A person born in Madrid.^[5][1]
3. (Costa Rica, Nicaragua) A person with green or blue eyes; also as an adjective.^[5][12]
4. (El Salvador, Mexico, derogatory) A servant.^[5][12]
5. A jack: a device for lifting heavy weights a short height, with gears and a ratchet or a screw.^[5][1]
6. An iron tool for gripping wood tightly, used to put hoops on casks.^[5][10]
7. (historical) A purse or bag for money; the money kept in it.^[5][11]
8. A mousetrap.^[5]
9. (colloquial) A sneak thief; a shrewd, cunning man.^[5][11]
10. (carpentry) A clamp of two plates drawn together by a screw.^[5][1]
11. (zoology) Any animal of the cat family.^[5]
12. (Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile) noughts and crosses.^[12][1]
13. (Argentina, Uruguay) A lively folk dance for couples, and its music.^[12][13]

Word family

• gata
• gatada
• gatear
• gatera
• gatuno
• gatuperio
• engatar
• gatillo
• gatito
• pelagatos
• gatuña

Related words

• Late Latin cattus
• Portuguese gato
• Catalan gat

Usage notes

The DLE has two unrelated words of the same spelling: gato “open-air market” in Peru, from Quechua qhatu (“market”), and gato, a rectangular cake of two layers joined with honey or jam in Costa Rica, from French gâteau (“cake”).^[5][1] Common phrases are a gatas “on all fours”^[4] and dar gato por liebre, literally “to give cat for hare”.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. gato
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 123
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. gato
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o 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. gato
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. cattus
7. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. gato
8. ^ Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. gat
9. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. gato
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 526
11. ^ 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, 33
12. ^ a b c d e Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. gato
13. ^ a b Garzón, Tobías (1910), Diccionario argentino, Barcelona: Imprenta Elzeviriana de Borrás y Mestres, p. 224
14. ^ 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. gato
15. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 356
16. ^ 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. gato