halcón

Forms

halcón m (plural halcones)^[1] Old Spanish wrote falcón, the form of the Cid, the fueros and the Alfonsine texts.^[2][3][4] The spelling halcón with ⟨h⟩ is Nebrija's.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish falcón, inherited from Late Latin falcō (“falcon”).^[2][6][7][1] The modern ⟨h⟩ stands for the Latin /f/, and falcón survives as a doublet.^[8][1] The same word is Portuguese falcão, Galician falcón, Catalan falcó, French faucon and Italian falcone.^[9][8]

The origin of the Latin word is disputed.^[2][1] Corominas takes it to be the same word as an adjective of the same form, used of people with crooked toes or feet and formed from falx (“sickle”), the bird being named for its hooked talons.^[2][6][10] He argues that Germanic borrowed the word from Latin, not the other way round: in Latin it is a common bird name from the 5th century, while in Germanic it has no clear etymology, is found early only in Old High German and Middle Dutch, and appears late in Scandinavia, and the Germanic peoples are thought to have learned falconry from the Romance-speaking peoples.^[2] The REW also leans to a Latin origin, noting that the word is missing in North Germanic, but allows a Germanic one.^[11] Wiktionary prefers a Germanic origin, from Proto-Germanic *falkô, “the grey bird”, from a root for “grey”.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is found as a personal name in a document of 924, and as a common noun in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy), whose empty perches stand sin falcones e sin adtores mudados “without falcons and without moulted goshawks”.^[2][6][4]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages the word belonged to falconry: the Fuero de Cáceres fines strangers who take goshawks or falcons, and Abraham of Toledo's Moamín (1250) and Alfonso X's prose name kinds of falcons by how they were taken, such as the falcón niego taken from the nest.^[4][3] Nebrija distinguished the falcon in general from the tagarote, borní, neblí, sacre, gerifalte, alfaneque and baharí.^[2] Autoridades lists many such kinds, mostly with quotations from a 16th-century treatise on falconry.^[12] The modern political sense, a supporter of hard-line measures and the use of force, has entered the DLE as its second sense.^[7][13] In Mexican slang halcón is also a lookout for drug dealers.^[1]

Timeline

• 924 – the word as a personal name in a document.^[2][6]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid (in a 14th-century copy) has falcones.^[4][2]
• 1234–1275 – the Fuero de Cáceres, the first record in a contemporary manuscript.^[4]
• 1250 – Abraham of Toledo's Moamín names the kinds of hunting falcons.^[4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija has halcón and halconero.^[2][6]
• 1532 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades lists the kinds of falcon used in falconry.^[12]
• 1899 – the Academy gives the etymology “Del lat. falco”.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A falcon: a medium-sized bird of prey with a small head, a strong hooked bill and swift flight, once trained for hunting birds: El halcón se lanzó sobre la paloma.^[7][1]
2. (politics) A hawk, a hardliner who favours force to settle a conflict.^[7][1][13]
3. (Mexico, slang) A lookout who watches the street for drug dealers.^[1]

Word family

• halconero
• halconera
• halconería
• halconear

Related words

• falcón
• Latin falco
• Portuguese falcão

Usage notes

Kinds of falcon have their own names in falconry, such as halcón niego, a young falcon taken from the nest, and halcón peregrino, the peregrine falcon.^[13][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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, 307
3. ^ a b 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. halcón
4. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. halcón
5. ^ 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. halcón
6. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. halcón
7. ^ a b c d 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. halcón
8. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2658
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3158
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. halcón
13. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. halcón
14. ^ 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. halcón
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 516