grano

Forms

grano m (plural granos)^[1] Old Spanish has grano, granos and the diminutive graniellos.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin grānum (“grain, seed”), and Old Spanish grano has the same form in the earliest texts.^[3][4][5][1] The Latin plural grāna gave grana, first “seeds of plants” and then the kermes used for red dye.^[3][4]

The same Latin word is Portuguese grão, Galician gran, Catalan gra, French grain, Italian grano and Romanian grâu;^[6][7][1] Basque borrowed it as garau.^[6][7][1]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *grāno- and Proto-Indo-European *ǵr̥h₂nóm.^[8][1] Its cognates include Old Irish grán, Lithuanian žìrnis (“pea”) and Old High German korn, from *kurna-.^[8] De Vaan prefers to explain the word as “that which has ripened”, from a root meaning “to grow old, ripen”, rather than “that which is ground”, from a root “to rub”, which has no attested verb forms.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word from the earliest texts, with Berceo; the BDELC gives 1220–50.^[3][4] The Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215, in a 14th-century copy) says the saint lived on herbs and grains, de yerbas e de granos, for eighteen years.^[9] In Berceo the word means both “grain” and, figuratively, “a bit”: non vos miento un grano “I don't lie to you one grain”, in the Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Already in the 15th century the word was used for the seed of a quince, a grain of salt and a single grape of a bunch.^[3] In 1611 Covarrubias defined grano as the seed of cereals, and gave also a small pimple on the face or body and the grain of tanned leather; his proverbial phrases include ser todo grano, sin paja “to be all grain and no chaff”, of solid teaching without empty words.^[10] The DTME dates the medical sense “pimple” from about 1400.^[11] The Diccionario de Autoridades extended the word by analogy to any small particle (a grain of sand or incense) and to the single fruits of a cluster, such as grapes or the seeds of a pomegranate.^[12]

In the Americas grano was a unit of weight for gold from the start: 3 granos de oro in Nicaragua in 1528.^[13] The modern dictionary keeps it as a twelfth of a tomín (48 mg) and as a quarter of a carat, and adds the figurative “the heart of a matter”, as in the phrase al grano “to the point”.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1215 – the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (in a 14th-century copy) has granos.^[9][2]
• 1220–50 – first record in Berceo, according to Corominas.^[3][4]
• c. 1400 – first record in the sense “pimple”.^[11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives grano como de sal “grain, as of salt”, Latin mica and grumus.^[3][14]
• 1528 – granos de oro as a weight in Nicaragua.^[13]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the senses “pimple” and “grain of leather”.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology Del lat. granum.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. grain: the seed and fruit of cereals.^[5][1]
2. A small seed of certain plants, as of mustard or anise.^[5]
3. Each of the seeds or fruits that together make up a cluster, as a single grape or a pomegranate seed.^[5][1]
4. A tiny particle of something, shaped like a seed: un grano de sal.^[5][1]
5. A small amount of something immaterial: No tiene ni un grano de sentido común.^[5]
6. Each of the small protuberances in the texture or surface of a body, as in stone, wood, metal or tanned leather; the texture of a material.^[5][1]
7. A pimple, a small swelling on the skin that sometimes fills with pus.^[5][1][11]
8. The substance or main point of a matter.^[5][1]
9. (historical) A unit of weight, a twelfth of a tomín, about 48 mg; a quarter of a carat.^[5][1]
10. (photography) The grain of a film or image.^[1]

Word family

• granear
• granizo
• granoso
• granar
• granazón
• grañón
• desgranar
• granujo
• granuja
• granillo

Related words

• granada
• granado
• granel
• granero
• gránulo
• grana
• granito
• engranar
• Latin grānum
• Portuguese grão

Usage notes

Ir al grano or al grano means to go straight to the point.^[5][1] Grano de arena is a modest contribution to a common cause, and no ser grano de anís is said of something that is no small matter.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o 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. grano
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 196
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. grano
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. grano
6. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 3130
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
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. grano
10. ^ 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. 934
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. grano
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 74
13. ^ 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. grano
14. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 358
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 540