horca

Forms

horca f (plural horcas)^[1] Old Spanish wrote forca (also forka, forga, forqua) until the late 15th century;^[2] Alonso de Palencia (1490) has both forca and horca.^[3][2] Forca lives on in Asturian, Leonese, Aragonese and old Navarrese, jorca with an aspirated h in Cantabria and Andalusia, and urca in Andalusia.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin furca (“two-pronged fork”), through Old Spanish forca.^[3][5][6][1] In Latin the farmer's fork already gave its name to a post set in the ground and forked at the top, used to hang the condemned by fastening the neck in the fork with a crossbar; the gallows later changed shape but kept the name.^[3][5] The Latin initial /f/ became /h/ and then silence, so that the spelling with ⟨f⟩ gave way to ⟨h⟩ from the late 15th century.^[3][4]

The same Latin word is Portuguese forca, Catalan forca, French fourche, Italian forca and Romanian furcă.^[7][4] Like Spanish, several of these languages use it for the gallows: fourches and the Italian plural as well.^[7][8]

The origin of the Latin noun is unclear.^[9][1] The etymologies in Walde–Hofmann start from a root in *ǵʰ-, which normally gives Latin ⟨h⟩; de Vaan considers a borrowing from another dialect only an emergency solution.^[9] Wiktionary compares Lithuanian žer̃gti (“to spread the legs”) and suggests a link with Proto-Germanic *furkaz (“stick, pole”) for the other senses.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record of the common noun is in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy): Joshua had the five kings enforcar sobre .v. forcas “hanged on five gallows”.^[10][2] A forka named as a landmark in a charter of 1070 is older.^[3][5] The Fuero de Zorita (1218–1250) already has the sense “string”: una forca de çebollas “a string of onions”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The gallows sense dominates the medieval texts, from the town charters (el enforcado de la forca, 1235) to Berceo's Milagros, where a thief is taken to la forca por concejo alzada “the gallows set up by the town”.^[10][3] Alfonso X's Estoria de España tells of a very high gallows made white.^[11] The verb was first enforcar (1202) and ahorcar only from 1469.^[3][5]

In 1611 Covarrubias explained that horca is properly a pole ending in two prongs with which farmers lift the sheaves and turn the grain on the threshing floor, and that the gallows took the name because criminals were once hanged from such forked poles.^[12] Autoridades records an old use: a forked stick with a crossbar, put on the neck of a slave or offender who was led through the streets, and still put on pigs and dogs in Galicia and Asturias to keep them out of fields.^[13] The phrase horca y cuchillo named a lord's right to judge and hang criminals in his lands.^[14][15]

In Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic a horca is a present given on someone's birthday or saint's day.^[16][17][18]

Timeline

• 1070 – forka as a landmark in a charter.^[3][5]
• 1101 – forcas in a document of the Huesca charters, DEMel's first record.^[2]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar uses forcas for gallows.^[10]
• 1202 – the verb enforcar in the Fuero of Madrid.^[3][5]
• 1218–1250 – the Fuero de Zorita has una forca de çebollas, a string of onions.^[10]
• 1246–1252 – Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora uses forca for gallows.^[10][3]
• 1469 – the verb ahorcar first appears, in the Cortes of Castile.^[3][5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija distinguishes the horca for hanging, the two-pronged fork and the horca for turning the grain.^[3]
• 1527 – first record from the Americas, in Nicaragua.^[19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains how the farmer's fork gave its name to the gallows.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives the word from Latin furca.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. A gallows: one or two upright posts with a crossbeam from which a condemned person is hanged by the neck; also hanging as a death penalty: Los rebeldes fueron condenados a la horca.^[6][21]
2. (historical) A forked stick with a crossbar, in which the neck of a condemned person was held while he was led through the streets.^[6]
3. A similar device put on the neck of pigs and dogs to keep them out of fields.^[6]
4. (agriculture) A pitchfork: a pole ending in two or more prongs, of wood or iron, used to stack sheaves, load them on the cart and turn the grain on the threshing floor (era).^[6][1]
5. A forked pole used to prop up the branches of trees or to build vine trellises.^[6]
6. A string of garlic or onions tied in two strands (horca de ajos, horca de cebollas).^[6]
7. (Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Dominican Republic) A birthday or saint's-day present.^[16][17][18]

Word family

• horcajo
• horcón
• horqueta
• horquilla
• ahorcar
• a horcajadas

Related words

• Latin furca
• Portuguese forca
• French fourche

Usage notes

In Aragon horca pajera is the winnowing fork.^[6] The phrase pasar por las horcas caudinas “pass under the Caudine Forks” means to accept a humiliating condition;^[1][12] Covarrubias already tells the story of the Romans forced to pass under a yoke of spears.^[1][12]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. horca
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 391
4. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2987
5. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. horca
6. ^ 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. horca
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. furca
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. fourche
9. ^ 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
10. ^ 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. horca
11. ^ 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. horca
12. ^ a b c d Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 993
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 176
14. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 2, 306
15. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 913
16. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 469
17. ^ a b Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. horca
18. ^ a b 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. horca
19. ^ 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. horca
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 575
21. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. horca