heder

Forms

heder (first-person singular present hiedo, first-person singular preterite hedí, past participle hedido)^[1] Old Spanish wrote feder, with the present fiede.^[2][3] The spelling heder is usual from Nebrija on.^[2] A form with an aspirated initial, jeder, is widespread in Cantabria, Asturias, Extremadura, Andalusia and Argentina.^[2][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish feder, inherited from Latin foeteō (“to stink”).^[2][5][6][1] Wiktionary spells the Latin verb with a long e in the first syllable, a spelling the Latin dictionaries also record.^[1][7] Old Spanish ⟨f⟩ gave ⟨h⟩, the usual spelling from Nebrija on; the aspirated pronunciation, spelt jeder, is widespread even where the aspirated h- is otherwise lost, which Corominas puts down to the coarse character of the word.^[2] He considers the diphthong of the present forms, recorded from the 13th century, analogical.^[2]

Most Romance languages kept the more common Latin pūteō instead; the verb for “to stink” survives only in Spanish, Portuguese feder, Galician feder and Asturian feder, a few Pyrenean valleys of Béarn, Dalmatian and southern Italian dialects.^[2][4][8]

De Vaan reconstructs a Proto-Italic stem meaning “smoking, smelly” and derives it from a Proto-Indo-European verb “to smoke”.^[9] Wiktionary likewise gives Proto-Indo-European *dʰewh₂- (“smoke”) as a possible source.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Berceo uses the verb in the Milagros de Nuestra Señora (1220–1250): Yo mezquino, fediondo, que fiedo más que can “I, wretched and foul, who stink worse than a dog”.^[2][5] The Fuero de Cáceres fines whoever burns a dunghill, bones, horns o a tal cosa que fiede “or any such thing that stinks”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias in 1611 explained the word from Latin foeteo and gave the sayings no hagáis cosa que hieda “don't do anything foolish” and ya hiede “it is already tiresome”.^[10] The Academy has recorded the figurative sense “to annoy, to be unbearable” since 1817, beside the physical one.^[11][6] Corominas notes figurative uses of “getting stirred up” in Quevedo and in an Argentine text of 1830.^[2]

According to Corominas the verb was common in the classical literary language but has declined in the modern written and urban language, which prefers the euphemism oler mal “to smell bad”; it is still lively in rural speech.^[2] In the Dominican Republic it can mean “to have serious consequences”.^[12]

Timeline

• 1220–1250 – Berceo writes fiedo in the Milagros de Nuestra Señora.^[2][5]
• 1254 – Alfonsine prose speaks of bad mines que fieden “that stink”.^[13]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija has heder, with Latin feteo and puteo.^[14][15]
• 1541 – first records in the Americas, in Michoacán.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias gives the sayings no hagáis cosa que hieda and ya hiede.^[10]
• 1734 – Autoridades notes the irregular present hiedo and the phrase heder la vida.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin foetere for the first time.^[18]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To stink or reek, to give off a very bad, penetrating smell: El pescado olvidado en la nevera hiede.^[6][1]
2. (intransitive, figurative) To annoy or weary someone; to be unbearable.^[6][19]

Word family

• hediondo
• hedentina
• hedor

Related words

• Portuguese feder

Usage notes

Heder is conjugated like entender, with ie in the stressed forms (hiedo, hiede, hieda).^[19][17] The Dominican and Nicaraguan saying todo le hiede y nada le huele describes an overly fussy person.^[20]

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 Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 338
3. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
4. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. heder
6. ^ 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. heder
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3407
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
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. 968
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real
12. ^ 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. heder
13. ^ 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)
14. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 361
15. ^ 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
16. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 135
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 558
19. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos
20. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer