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hinojo

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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word hinojo

hinojo1 fennel

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
1250–1300 a text of Alfonso X's prose, spelt fenoio
Inherited from
Latin fenuculum
Ultimate origin
Latin fēnum

Pronunciation

  • /iˈnoxo/, [iˈno.xo][1]

Forms

hinojo m (plural hinojos)[1]

Etymology

The word for fennel is inherited from Late Latin fenuculum (“fennel”), through Old Spanish finojo.[2][3][4][1] The Late Latin form stands beside classical feniculum, and both are diminutives of fēnum (“hay”), so that the plant was a “little hay”.[2][3][5] Corominas notes that the Late Latin form appears in Latin texts from the 3rd century and is the form that survived in Romance.[2]

The same Latin word is Portuguese funcho, Galician fiúncho, Asturian cenoyu, Aragonese fenollo, Catalan fonoll, French fenouil and Italian finocchio.[6][2][7][1] The base word was also written faenum; de Vaan reconstructs *dʰeh₁-no- (“yield”), from the root of “to suckle”, if ⟨fē-⟩ is the older spelling, and calls the word of unknown origin if ⟨fae-⟩ is.[8]

The regular Castilian outcome would have been henojo, which survives only in the place name ⟨Fenojosa⟩ in Berceo and, according to Ramos Duarte, in the Mexican state of Guerrero.[2] Corominas explains the unexpected /i/ by paronymic attraction from the medieval word for the knee, hinojo2, whose /i/ was regular: the two words had become so alike that they were confused, the plant name took the /i/ and the knee word an aspirated ⟨h-⟩, and the knee word finally gave way to rodilla.[2][3] He takes this as evidence that Latin /f/ was already a weak, aspirated sound in Castilian from the beginnings of the language.[2] The DLE likewise says the form was influenced by the knee word.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record in the Alfonsine prose is a recipe in a book on hunting animals that lists, among other seeds, la semiente del fenoio “fennel seed”.[9] Corominas's first record is finojo in the Glosario de Palacio of about 1400, with the derived place name ⟨Finojosa⟩ already in a charter of 1148.[2][3] The same glossary renders Latin poples “back of the knee” with a Latin word for fennel, a sign of how the two Spanish words were confused.[2]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso de Palencia still wrote finojo;[2] hinojo is in Nebrija, Gabriel Alonso de Herrera and Laguna.[2] Nebrija gave Latin feniculum for the garden plant and hippomarathrum for the wild one.[6][10][11] Covarrubias in 1611 quoted Dioscorides and Laguna on its virtues, told how snakes regain their sight by tasting fennel in spring, and distinguished wild from garden fennel.[12] The Diccionario de Autoridades described both kinds and, after Laguna, the hinojo marino or sea fennel of the coastal rocks.[13]

Dialect forms with other initial consonants include cinojo in western Cáceres, cenoyu in Asturias and jenoyu in Ribadesella;[2] finózo is used by the Jews of Morocco.[2] In Cuba hinojo also names a wild plant of the daisy family that resembles fennel, and in the Canaries jinojo is a mild oath: vete al jinojo means “go to the devil”.[14][15]

Timeline

  • 1148 – the derived place name ⟨Finojosa⟩ appears in a charter.[2][3]
  • 1250–1300 – fenoio “fennel” in the prose of Alfonso X's circle.[9]
  • c. 1400 – Corominas's first record of finojo, in the Glosario de Palacio.[2][3]
  • c. 1495 – Nebrija's Vocabulario has hinojo, “a well-known herb”.[10][11]
  • 1516 – the first record from the Americas, fennel seed in a Puerto Rican account.[16]
  • 1611 – Covarrubias describes the plant after Dioscorides and Laguna.[12]
  • 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology for the first time, from Latin feniculum.[17]

Meanings

Noun

  1. fennel (Foeniculum vulgare): a tall aromatic umbellifer with threadlike leaves and small yellow flowers, sweet to the taste and used in medicine and as a condiment: Añadió unas semillas de hinojo al pan.[4][1][18]
  2. hinojo marino: samphire or sea fennel (Crithmum maritimum), a fleshy-leaved umbellifer of coastal rocks.[4][18]

Word family

  • hinojal

hinojo2 knee

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
c. 1140 Cantar de mio Cid, as inojos
Inherited from
Latin genuculum
Ultimate origin
Proto-Indo-European *ǵónu

Pronunciation

  • /iˈnoxo/, [iˈno.xo][1]

Forms

hinojo m (plural hinojos)[1]

Etymology

The word for the knee is inherited from Vulgar Latin genuculum (“knee”), through Old Spanish inojo.[19][4][1] The Vulgar Latin word is an altered form of geniculum, a diminutive of genū (“knee”), which goes back to *ǵónu.[1][20] Meyer-Lübke notes that the diminutive ousted the simple word in its proper sense, and the same word is Romanian genunchi, Italian ginocchio, French genou, Occitan genolh, Catalan genoll and Portuguese joelho.[21][19] The Portuguese word comes by metathesis from older geollo.[22]

Corominas writes that the regular development of the Latin word was enojo, found in Berceo, with dialectal jenojo in the Libro de Alexandre and genollo in the Fueros de Aragón.[19] The preceding palatal, however, produced the variant with /i/, which dominated from the start; the DLE derives its /i/ from a form yenojo.[19][4] Through confusion with the plant name, hinojo1, the word then took an aspirated ⟨h-⟩ or ⟨f-⟩ that did not belong to it, as in finojo in the Partidas and in Juan Ruiz.[19][2]

In the Fueros de Aragón and other Aragonese legal texts the word also means “lineage, family”, as the Latin word did in medieval texts, “degree of kinship”.[19][23] Corominas sees a figurative use of “knee”, from the old custom of placing a newborn child on the knees of its father or a close relative.[19]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy), where the hero reaches the church of Santa María in Burgos and fincó los inojos, de coraçón rogava “knelt down and prayed with all his heart”.[24][19] The phrase fincar los inojos “to kneel” is the usual context in the early texts.[24]

Semantic evolution

The word was in frequent use throughout the Middle Ages, in Berceo, the Alexandre, Juan Ruiz and Juan Manuel;[19] Juan Ruiz also has the verb finojar “to make kneel”.[19] It was already declining by the end of the period: Nebrija explained inojos by rodillas, and in the second quarter of the 16th century Juan de Valdés wrote that where some said inojos or hinojos he said rodillas, though either could be used.[19][25] Finojos and hinojos belong to the chivalric jargon of the Quijote, and archaising authors such as Mariana and the Inca Garcilaso used the word as their own.[19][13] In 1625 Pedro Espinosa listed the phrase de hinojos among vulgar expressions.[19]

Autoridades noted that the word was “not much used any more”, and the Academy's dictionaries from 1843 marked it as old, with the phrase hinojos fitos “on bended knees”.[13][26] In Aragonese the word has survived to the present as chinollo or chinullo in Ansó, Echo and the Sierra de Guara.[19] Today it is a formal or literary word, used mainly in the phrase de hinojos “on one's knees”.[18][4][27]

Timeline

  • c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has fincó los inojos “he knelt”.[24][19]
  • c. 1236 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos has declinó los inojos.[24]
  • 1250–1279 – the Alfonsine Lapidario describes a constellation figure que tiene los inoios ficados “who is kneeling”.[9]
  • c. 1495 – Nebrija equates inojos with rodillas, Latin genu.[25][19]
  • 1525–1550 – Juan de Valdés prefers rodillas to inojos.[19]
  • 1625 – Pedro Espinosa calls de hinojos a vulgar phrase.[19]
  • 1843 – the Academy marks the word as old.[26]
  • 1884 – the Academy derives it from Latin geniculum.[17]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (formal, literary, chiefly in the plural) knee: Pidió perdón a su padre de hinojos.[4][1][27]

Word family

  • ahinojar
  • henojil
  • heno
  • rodilla
  • genuflexión
  • Latin genū
  • Portuguese funcho
  • Portuguese joelho

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 365
  3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hinojo
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. hinojo
  5. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. fenouil
  6. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. fenuculum
  7. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 4, 93
  8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  9. ^ 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. hinojo
  10. ^ 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. hinojo1
  11. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 363
  12. ^ 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. 982
  13. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 161
  14. ^ Suárez, Constantino (1921), Vocabulario cubano, La Habana: Librería Cervantes / Madrid: Perlado, Páez y Compañía, p. 285
  15. ^ Maffiotte, Luis (1993), Los canarismos (manuscript c. 1887), ed. Lothar Siemens Hernández, Las Palmas: Instituto de Estudios Canarios, p. 85
  16. ^ 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. hinojo
  17. ^ 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. 568
  18. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hinojo
  19. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 366
  20. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. geniculum
  21. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  22. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1967
  23. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. geniculum
  24. ^ 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. hinojo
  25. ^ 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. hinojo2
  26. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 389
  27. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. hinojo 2

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Hinojo.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/hinojo. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

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