grúa

Forms

grúa f (plural grúas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish grua, inherited from Latin gruem (“crane”), the accusative of the Latin noun, whose ending was remade because the noun was feminine, in Vulgar Latin or later.^[2][1][3] In Old Spanish the word meant the bird; it gave way to grulla, which Corominas explains as a change of the variant gruya.^[2][4]

The sense “machine for lifting weights” was, according to Corominas, taken from Catalan grua, by comparison of the machine with a crane lifting its beak out of the water, and spread from the eastern ports of Spain to Castilian and Portuguese.^[2][4][5] Prat Sabater counts it among the Catalan loans.^[6] The DHLE, though, finds the war machine in Spanish as early as 1427–1428, and the DLE simply derives the word from the Latin noun, which already named a siege machine.^[3][7][8] The Academy's 1899 edition took it from Italian instead.^[9]

The Latin accusative also explains Occitan grua, Italian grua in some dialects and French grue, and perhaps Romanian gruie; Portuguese grou comes from a masculine Vulgar Latin *gruum.^[2][10] De Vaan reconstructs an Indo-European stem in -u- for “crane”, and compares Ancient Greek γέρανος (géranos).^[11] Wiktionary traces it to the root Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂- (“to cry hoarsely”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DHLE and the CDH's first record is the Moamín of 1250, a falconry book translated by Abraham of Toledo, in a manuscript of the later 13th century: carne de grúa “crane's meat” is good food for the hawks.^[3][12] The bird is the sense of all the medieval records, as in Calila e Dimna (1251).^[2][12]

Semantic evolution

The bird sense was still used by Juan Manuel and by Garcilaso, but declined from the 16th century, as grulla took its place.^[2][3] Enrique de Villena's glosses on the Aeneid (1427–1428) use the word for a siege engine that hoisted stones or soldiers against the walls, and López de Gómara (1554) for a machine with a turning arm and pulleys that lifts heavy loads.^[3] Corominas dates this sense from Sigüenza, in 1600.^[2][4]

The word became common with the industrial age.^[3] It has named a tow truck since 1950 and the camera crane of film and television since 1976.^[3] Since 1977 it has also named the municipal service that tows away badly parked cars.^[3] Sailors used it from 1765 for the outline of a ship's timbers and for the trunnion seat of a gun carriage.^[3] In the Dominican Republic a grúa is a person, usually a woman, who goes out to fetch someone home from a party.^[13]

Timeline

• c. 1106 – the form gruya in Abenbuclárix.^[2]
• 1250 – grúa “crane (bird)” in the Moamín.^[3][12]
• 1335 – grulla appears, in Juan Ruiz.^[4]
• 1427–1428 – Villena uses grúa for a siege engine.^[3]
• 1485 – Gutiérrez Cerezo's grammar gives it for Latin grus.^[3]
• 1554 – López de Gómara uses it for a lifting machine.^[3]
• 1600 – the lifting machine in Sigüenza, Corominas's first record of that sense.^[2]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary has the machine, the old war machine and the obsolete bird sense.^[9]
• 1950 – the tow truck, in Fernández Flórez.^[3]
• 1977 – the municipal tow service, in El País.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A crane: a machine with a jib on a turning vertical axis and one or more pulleys, for lifting loads and moving them: Las grúas del puerto descargaban contenedores toda la noche.^[7][1]
2. A tow truck, a vehicle fitted to lift or tow other vehicles.^[7][1]
3. The tow truck sent by the authorities to remove badly parked cars: Aparqué en la acera y vino la grúa.^[7]
4. (film, television) A camera crane, a movable arm with a platform carrying the camera.^[7]
5. (military, historical) A machine used in attacking fortified places.^[7]
6. (obsolete) The bird now called grulla.^[7][1]

Word family

• gruero

Related words

• grulla
• Latin grūs
• Catalan grua
• French grue

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. 3, 223
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Real Academia Española (2013–), Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (DHLE), https://www.rae.es/dhle, p. s.v. grúa
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. grulla
5. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
6. ^ Prat Sabater, Marta (2003), Préstamos del catalán en el léxico español, doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
7. ^ a b c d e f g 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. grúa
8. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 505
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ 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. grúa
13. ^ Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org