hombre

Forms

hombre m (plural hombres)^[1] Old Spanish wrote omne, ome, omme, homne and ombre;^[2][3][4] Berceo mostly has omne.^[2][3][4] Diphthongised forms are rare: uemne and uamne in the Glosas Emilianenses, uemne in a document of Osma of 1220 and huembre in one of 1186.^[2] Home is the Asturian form; the Pas valley in Cantabria says hobre.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin homo (“human being, man”); the Old Spanish form was omne.^[2][6][7][1] The Latin accusative ⟨hominem⟩ lost its unstressed middle vowel, giving ⟨omne⟩; this was dissimilated to omre, and a glide /b/ grew between /m/ and /r/, as in hembra, nombre, hambre, cumbre and costumbre.^[1][5][8]

The stressed ŏ of ⟨homo⟩ would normally have become ⟨ue⟩, and the early uemne shows that it sometimes did, but forms with ⟨o⟩ prevail from the oldest documents on, as in conde, monte and compra.^[2] Corominas rejects the view that the ⟨o⟩ comes from unstressed use, since the noun is hardly ever used without stress, and follows Meyer-Lübke and Menéndez Pidal in explaining it by a rustic Latin or early Romance pronunciation in which the following nasal closed the vowel.^[2]

The same Latin word is Portuguese homem, Galician home, Asturian home, Catalan home, Occitan ome, French homme, Italian uomo and Romanian om.^[9][5][1]

The Latin word comes from an older hemō and *hemō; de Vaan reconstructs *dʰǵʰ(e)m-ōn (“earthling, human”), a derivative of the word for “earth” seen in humus.^[10][1] Its cognates include 𐌲𐌿𐌼𐌰 (guma, “man”), žmogùs (“man”) and duine (“person”).^[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Glosas Emilianenses, about 950, have the diphthongised uemne and uamne; the form ombre first appears in a document of Sigüenza of 1220.^[2][6] The Auto de los Reyes Magos (c. 1180) has uno omne es nacido de carne “a man is born of flesh”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The word continued Latin homo in meaning both “human being” and “male person”;^[13][2] Autoridades noted that, though it covered men and women, in Castilian it was usually taken for the male.^[13][2] In the Middle Ages omne or el omne was also an indefinite pronoun, like French on and Catalan hom: Berceo has it, and it lasted to the Celestina and in Juan de Valdés and the speech of 16th-century shepherds and 17th-century ruffians.^[2] Alfonso X used omne bueno for a man of the commons, and the old sense “subject, vassal” survives in homenaje, taken from Old Occitan.^[14][13][6]

The Academy's 1884 dictionary added the popular sense “husband” and the card game.^[15] The card game passed into French as hombre and English as ombre (1650s), named from a phrase said during play;^[16][1] English hombre “a man, especially of Spanish descent” dates from 1846.^[16][1]

Timeline

• c. 950 – the Glosas Emilianenses have uemne and uamne.^[2]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has omnes.^[12]
• c. 1180 – omne in the Auto de los Reyes Magos.^[12]
• 1186 – huembre in a document of Campó.^[2]
• 1220 – ombre in a document of Sigüenza, the first record of the modern form.^[2]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X uses omne for “one”, “human being” and “male”.^[14]
• 1494 – first record in the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias notes that old Castilian said ome.^[18]
• 1650s – English ombre, the card game.^[16]
• 1846 – English hombre “man”.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A human being, man or woman; the human species: el hombre del Neolítico.^[7][1]
2. A man, a male person.^[7][1]
3. An adult man, as opposed to a boy.^[7][19]
4. A man with the qualities thought most manly: ¡Eso es un hombre!^[7][20]
5. (colloquial) A woman's husband or partner.^[7][1]
6. ombre, an old Spanish card game like tresillo, which spread through Europe in the 16th century.^[7][1]
7. (rare) In some card games, the player who declares he will play against the others.^[7]

Interjection

1. Expresses surprise or astonishment, or softens a remark: ¡Hombre, qué alegría verte!^[7][1]

Word family

• hombrada
• hombrear
• hombrecillo
• hombretón
• hombría
• hombruno
• superhombre
• hombredad
• prohombre

Related words

• homenaje
• homicidio
• humano
• Latin homo
• Portuguese homem
• English hombre

Usage notes

Hombre was used as an indefinite pronoun “one” until the 16th and 17th centuries, a use now lost.^[2] In Chile the interjection is often clipped to ¡hom!.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 379
3. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. hombre
4. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. 254
5. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. homo
6. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hombre
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. hombre
8. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 355
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4170
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. homō
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. homō
12. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. hombre
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, 168
14. ^ 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. hombre
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 572
16. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
17. ^ 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. hombre
18. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 987
19. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. hombre
20. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hombre
21. ^ Román, Manuel Antonio (1901–1918), Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, 5 vols., Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de San José, p. 129