hielo

Forms

hielo m (plural hielos)^[1] Old Spanish wrote the word yelo, less often gelo or ielo; the manuscripts of the Libro de Alexandre have gielo and jelo.^[2][3][4] Autoridades insisted on the spelling with ⟨h⟩, from Latin gelu, against those who wrote ⟨y⟩.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish yelo, inherited from Latin gelu (“frost, cold; ice”).^[3][6][7][1] The Latin word also survives in Romanian ger, French gel, Occitan gel and Catalan gel, in Asturian xelu and in Aragonese chelo.^{[8][1][9][10]} Corominas notes that it has survived as a popular word almost only in Castilian: Italian gelo is learned, Portuguese gelo shows itself learned by keeping the /l/, which inherited Portuguese words lose (as in gear (“to freeze”)), and in Catalan and Occitan, where it is old and popular, it is less common than the descendants of glacies.^[3] The verb gelō (“to freeze”) has survived better, in all the western Romance languages.^[3]

The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“cold”), through a stem *gel-u-.^[1] The OLD compares Old High German kalt and English cold.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250), which explains that hired labourers do not all serve equally the whole year, Ca enel tienpo delas nieues et delos yelos, et delas aguas ninguna obra non fazen “for in the season of snows, frosts and rains they do no work”.^[4] Here the word means hard frost, freezing weather.^[4][12] Corominas's first record is Berceo's Milagros (st. 778), where the devil is told Sobre yelo escribes “you are writing on ice”.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

The word has been in general use at all periods.^[3] Alfonso X's prose already uses it for frozen water and for frost, as when animals lie exposed a las calenturas del sol & al yelo “to the heat of the sun and to the frost”.^[12] Covarrubias (1611) took it from Latin gelu, and fancifully from a Greek word for “glass”, because ice looks like glass or crystal; he notes that drinking with ice was a sign of a pampered life.^[13]

Autoridades defined it first as the extreme cold that fixes liquids and stops their motion, then as the frozen liquid itself, and metaphorically as disdain, the opposite of the fire of love.^[5] The Academy's 1843 dictionary had frialdad en los afectos “coldness of feeling”, pasmo “stupefaction”, and a regional plural for a sugar sweet.^[14] In Jaén this sweet, a yelo, was still sold by confectioners in 1808.^[15] Moliner records romper el hielo “to break the ice” and quedarse de hielo “to be dumbfounded”.^[16]

In Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua hielo also means cold or cool weather, and in Honduras a hailstorm and a plant disease; in Cuba dar hielo a alguien is to treat someone with indifference.^[17][7] Dominican Spanish uses it for the cold of the night or early morning.^[18] The older form yelo was borrowed into Tagalog and Cebuano as yelo.^[1]

Timeline

• 1218–c. 1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes has the plural yelos “frosts”.^[4]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo's Milagros, the first record for Corominas (the CDH text is an 18th-century copy).^[6][3][4]
• 1272–1280 – Alfonso X's General estoria uses yelo for ice and for frost.^[12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija's Spanish–Latin vocabulary has jelo o elada, Latin gelu, glacies, pruina.^[19]
• 1534 – the first record from the Americas, in Puebla.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias enters the word as ielo.^[13]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary defines it as water turned solid by the cold.^[21]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary adds the figurative “coldness of feeling”.^[14]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin gelu.^[22]

Meanings

Noun

1. ice: water turned into a solid, crystalline body by a fall in temperature: Echa un poco de hielo en la jarra.^[7][1]
2. frost; a helada.^[7][16]
3. Coldness of feeling, indifference between people.^[7][16]
4. hielo seco: dry ice, solid carbon dioxide.^[7]
5. (Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua) Cold or cool weather.^[17]

Word family

• helar
• helada
• helado
• heladero
• heladería
• deshelar
• deshielo

Related words

• congelar
• gélido
• gelatina
• jalea
• Latin gelu

Usage notes

Romper el hielo is “to break the ice” in a conversation or relationship.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. hielo
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 353
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. hielo
5. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. hielo
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hielo
7. ^ 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. hielo
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. xelu
10. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c 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. hielo
13. ^ 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. 1032
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 386
15. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 319
16. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hielo
17. ^ 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. hielo
18. ^ 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. hielo
19. ^ 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. hielo
20. ^ 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. hielo
21. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 468
22. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 526