grueso

Forms

grueso (feminine gruesa, masculine plural gruesos, feminine plural gruesas)^[1] Old Spanish wrote gruesso, with a voiceless /s/, and also grossa in Alfonso X's Lapidario.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin grossus (“thick, bulky”), through Old Spanish gruesso.^[2][5][6][1] The DLE calls the Latin word Late Latin; it is recorded from the 1st century.^[6][7] The DHLF and Bénaben describe it as an altered form of classical Latin crassus (“fat, thick”).^[7][8]

The same Latin word is Portuguese grosso, Galician groso, Asturian gruesu, Catalan gros, French gros, Italian grosso and Romanian gros.^[9][10][1] Spanish later took some of its relatives from other languages: groso, said of tobacco, from Portuguese, and the coin gros and the silk gro from French.^[2][5]

De Vaan notes that the IEW connects the Latin adjective with the Welsh word bras (“thick”), which Schrijver reconstructs differently, as Proto-Celtic *brs-t/so-.^[11] Wiktionary calls the Latin word of uncertain origin, probably a slang word, often compared with the same classical adjective and with the noun meaning “unripe fig”.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is in use from the beginnings of the language: the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140) has cavallos gruesos “stout horses”.^[2][5][12] In Alfonso X's Lapidario (1250–1279) it means “stout, corpulent”: a stone that makes a very fat man („omne muy gruesso”) grow thin.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In Alfonso X's prose the word also means “heavy, dense” and, of the mind, “dull”.^[4] Its sense could stretch to “coarse, rough”, as in the Rimado de Palacio, and Nebrija has gruesso de ingenio; in the Aragonese Pedro de Luna (early 15th century) it means “large”, as in Catalan and Gallo-Romance.^[2] Today one says un hombre grueso but rarely un animal grueso, which is usual in the Leonese of Miranda and was in Old Portuguese.^[2]

As a noun it meant the bulk of a thing in Autoridades, and by 1817 also the main part of a whole, as in el grueso del ejército.^[13][14] The feminine noun gruesa “twelve dozen” dates from 1680, and its sense “main income of a prebend” from 1597.^[2][5] The Academy added the thick stroke of a letter and the third dimension of a solid in 1884.^[15] In Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras young people use grueso for a difficult problem or an impressive thing, and in the Dominican Republic it means “obscene”.^[16][17]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has cavallos gruesos.^[5][12]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses gruesso for a fat man and grossa for a thick liquid.^[4]
• 1251 – the derivative grosura “fat” is first recorded, in the Calila.^[2][5]
• 1444 – the derivative grosero is first recorded.^[5]
• 1517 – the first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo, of mercaderes gruesos “wealthy merchants”.^[18]
• 1609 – grosor “thickness” is first recorded, in Garcilaso.^[2][5]
• 1611 – Covarrubias gives delgado as its opposite.^[19]
• 1680 – gruesa “twelve dozen” is first recorded.^[2][5]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology, “Del lat. grossus”.^[15]

Meanings

Adjective

1. thick, bulky; of a person, stout, corpulent: un tronco grueso.^[6][1]
2. Larger than usual.^[6]
3. (rare) Of the mind or wit, dull, slow.^[6]
4. (obsolete) Strong, hard and heavy.^[6]
5. (Mexico, Central America, colloquial) Of a problem, difficult; of a thing, impressive.^[16]

Noun

1. thickness: el grueso de la tabla.^[6][1]
2. The main and strongest part of a whole, the bulk: el grueso de los votantes.^[6][1]
3. The thick stroke of a letter, as against the perfil.^[6]
4. (geometry) One of the three dimensions of a solid, usually the smallest.^[6]

Word family

• grosura
• grosor
• grosero
• engrosar
• gruesa

Related words

• gro
• Latin grossus
• French gros

Usage notes

Moliner describes grueso as the polite word for gordo when speaking of people.^[20] En grueso means “wholesale, in large quantities”, and intestino grueso is the large intestine.^[6][1] The feminine noun gruesa means “gross, twelve dozen”, an abbreviation of docena gruesa.^[5][6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 223
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. grueso
4. ^ a b c d 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. grueso
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. grueso
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. grueso
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. gros
8. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. grueso
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3881
10. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 3146
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 Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. s.v. grueso
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 83
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 452
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 543
16. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. grueso
17. ^ Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. grueso
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. grueso
19. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 938
20. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. grueso