hongo

Forms

hongo m (plural hongos)^[1] Old Spanish wrote fongo;^[2][3] hongo appears beside it in the 13th century and is the usual form in Alfonso de Palencia (1490).^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish fongo, inherited from Latin fungus (“mushroom, fungus”).^[3][4][5][1] The Latin word lives on as a popular word in Italian fungo and in the Raeto-Romance dialects;^[3][6] Portuguese fungo has been reduced by the competition of cogumelo to the name of the puffball and other poisonous kinds.^[3][6] Mozarabic fungu is the Mozarabic form, and Basque borrowed the word as Basque onddo (“mushroom”).^[3][7] In Catalonia, Occitania, north-eastern France, Romania and parts of Italy the Latin bōlētus took its place.^[3] Catalan fong is a modern borrowing from Spanish, which Coromines calls a barbarous Catalanisation; a few places near the border use Catalan fongo for “mushroom”, a loan from Aragonese fongo.^[8]

De Vaan thinks the Latin noun is probably a loan from a non-Indo-European language, taken over separately by Latin, Greek and Armenian in a form like *sphong-; the Greek word is Ancient Greek σπόγγος (spóngos, “sponge; fungus”).^[9] Wiktionary also proposes a substrate origin.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH has the word in Alfonso X's Lapidario (c. 1250, in a manuscript of the mid-13th century), which says that a stone is a good remedy for the poison that comes from fongos “mushrooms”.^[2][10] The Libro de los caballos (c. 1275) already spells it hongos, in a recipe that has them burnt to powder.^[2] Corominas dates the first record about a century later, to the glossaries of about 1400 that translate Latin boletus by fongo.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

From early on the word competed with seta: in much of Spain both are used, with some difference of sense, and Covarrubias states that the hongo was the more prized of the two.^[3] In eastern Spain hongo is above all the name of the saffron milk cap, the variety gastronomes prize most.^[3] Covarrubias (1611) also uses hongo for a disease of trees, and tells the old derivation of fungus from funus “funeral”, because of the danger of eating them.^[11] Autoridades (1734) describes mushrooms as a wild fruit that the earth produces after heavy rain, mostly harmful or poisonous, and adds the tree disease whose growths give tinder.^[12]

The Academy added the sense of a felt hat with a rounded crown in 1884, the bowler hat now also called bombín.^[13][14] Modern biology uses hongo for the fungi as a whole, and in the plural for the kingdom of the fungi.^[5][14] In Latin America it is the common word for a mushroom.^[1] In 16th-century Mexico it rendered the Nahuatl name for the mushrooms that intoxicate.^[15] The hongo atómico is the mushroom cloud of an atomic explosion.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – Alfonso X's Lapidario has fongos.^[2][10]
• c. 1275 – the Libro de los caballos has the spelling hongos.^[2]
• c. 1400 – glossaries translate Latin boletus by fongo, Corominas's first record.^[3][4]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia uses hongo.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija lists hongo de prado, hongo sospechoso and hongo del arbol.^[16][3]
• 1575 – the first records from the Americas, in Mexico.^[15]
• 1611 – Covarrubias uses it also for a disease of trees.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the sense of a felt hat.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fungus: an organism without chlorophyll that reproduces by spores and lives as a parasite or on decaying matter; in the plural, the fungi as a group.^[5][1]
2. (usually in the plural) A fungal infection, usually of the skin: Tiene hongos en los pies.^[5]
3. A mushroom with cap and stem, a seta; in Latin America, any mushroom.^[5][1]
4. A bowler hat, short for sombrero hongo.^[5][1]
5. (nautical) The top of a ventilation pipe on deck, with a domed cap that keeps out the spray.^[5]
6. A rounded lump of carbon at the end of a burning wick.^[1]
7. (Uruguay, popular) The buttocks;^[5][17] (euphemism) the anus.^[5][17]

Word family

• hongoso

Related words

• fungoso
• fungicida
• seta
• Latin fungus
• Italian fungo

Usage notes

Hongo marino is another name for the sea anemone.^[5] In the Canaries hongo is the flower at the tip of each banana in a bunch, which has to be cut off so that the fruit does not rot.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. hongo
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 383
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hongo
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. hongo
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 311
8. ^ 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
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 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. hongo
11. ^ 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. 1, 990
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4
13. ^ 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. 574
14. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hongo
15. ^ a b 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. hongo
16. ^ 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. hongo
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. hongo
18. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. hongo