grillo

Forms

grillo m (plural grillos)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish grillo, inherited from Latin grillus (“cricket”).^[2][3][4][1] The Latin word is common from Pliny on, sometimes spelt with ⟨y⟩.^[2][5] Judging by most of the Romance forms its /i/ was long.^[2]

The same word is Catalan grill, Portuguese grilo, Galician grilo, Italian grillo, Old Occitan grilh and Romanian grier, with the derivative French grillon.^[2][6][7]

The Latin word's own origin is disputed.^[2][1] The OLD and Wiktionary take it from Ancient Greek γρύλλος (grúllos), the name of a dance said to be Egyptian and of a performer in it, and also “caricature”, a sense Pliny gives to the Latin word too.^[5][1][8] Corominas rejects this: in antiquity the Greek words of this form mean only “pig” or “conger”, and the insect sense appears only in modern Greek, so he takes the Latin word to be imitative of the insect's call.^[2] Beekes keeps the dance word apart from the word for “pig”.^[8]

The sense “fetters”, used in the plural, belongs to the same word for Corominas, named from the metallic sound of the prisoner's chains, which recalls the cricket's chirp, as Autoridades already said.^[2][3][9] The DLE and Moliner give the fetters a separate headword, from French grille.^[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record of the insect is a 13th-century Bible manuscript of the Escorial (I-j-8).^[2][3] The sense “fetters” follows in the Fuero de Alarcón of about 1300, which lists çepo, cadena, corma, grillo, esposas among the means of holding a prisoner.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Juan Ruiz (1330–1343) has money that breaks chains and tira çepos e grillos “takes off stocks and fetters”, Corominas's first record of that sense.^[12][2] Nebrija in 1495 gave grillo as a kind of cicada and grillos as fetters for the feet.^[13][14] Covarrubias in 1611 recorded the expression andar a caza de grillos, to waste time chasing something that seems easy to catch but always escapes, and the Academy still lists andar a grillos.^[15][4]

In much of southern Spain grillo is the only name for the grasshopper or locust.^[2] In the Americas the word has many figurative senses: in Mexico a person who gossips and schemes in politics, in Puerto Rico a lively, restless person, in Venezuela an obsession, in Cuba and the Dominican Republic a woman of loose morals, in Panama a small tractor.^[16] In Ecuador it was the nickel coin of five centavos.^[17]

Timeline

• 13th century – a Bible manuscript of the Escorial, the first record of the insect.^[2][3]
• c. 1300 – the Fuero de Alarcón uses grillo for a fetter.^[12]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor has grillos “fetters”.^[12][2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija lists the insect and the fetters.^[13]
• 1544 – first record from the Americas, in Paraguay.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records andar a caza de grillos.^[15]
• 1734 – the derivative grillete is first recorded.^[3]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary admits the sense “sprout”.^[2][19]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cricket, a jumping orthopteran insect whose male makes a shrill, monotonous sound by rubbing its wing cases together: Desde el jardín se oía cantar a un grillo.^[4][11][1]
2. (in the plural) fetters: a pair of shackles joined by a bolt, put on a prisoner's feet; figuratively, anything that hinders movement.^[10][11]
3. (Mexico) A person who gossips and slanders in political or business circles to gain an advantage.^[16][20]
4. (Puerto Rico) A lively, restless person.^[16]
5. (Venezuela) A constant worry, an obsession.^[16][17]
6. (Panama) A small tractor.^[16]

Word family

• grillete

Related words

• Latin gryllus
• Portuguese grilo
• Catalan grill

Usage notes

Grillo cebollero or grillo real is the mole cricket.^[4] The DLE has a separate grillo “sprout of a seed, bulb or tuber”, which it derives from Latin *gallellus (“sprout”);^[4] Corominas doubts that it is the same word as the insect, though Meyer-Lübke and Wartburg thought so.^[4][2][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 214
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. grillo
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. grillo
5. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. gryllus
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3900
7. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. grill
8. ^ a b Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. γρύλλος
9. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. grillo
10. ^ a b 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. grillos
11. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. grillo
12. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. grillo
13. ^ a b Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. grillo
14. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 358
15. ^ 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. 937
16. ^ 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. grillo
17. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 440
18. ^ 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. grillo
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 451
20. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. grillo
21. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 3018