huerto

Forms

huerto m (plural huertos)^[1] Old Spanish texts write uerto, verto, uorto, orto and horto beside huerto.^[2][3] Asturian has güertu; the spelling güerto is found in 16th-century Mexico.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish uerto, inherited from Latin hortus (“garden”).^[3][6][7][1] The word is common to all the Romance languages except Romanian and French: Portuguese horto, Galician horto, Catalan hort, Italian orto and Old French ort.^[3][8][9]

The Latin word goes back to *hortos and Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰortós (“enclosure”).^[1][10] Its cognates include Ancient Greek χόρτος (khórtos, “enclosed place, feeding place”) and Old Irish gort (“field, standing crop”), and within Latin it is related to cohors.^[10][11] De Vaan sets it beside a second Indo-European noun of the same meaning, the source of Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐍂𐌳𐍃 (gards, “house”) and Old Church Slavonic градъ (gradŭ, “town, garden”).^[10] Gómez de Silva counts jardín among the words of the same family.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is a charter of 1107, with the spelling uerto.^[3][6] In the earliest literary texts it is a garden: the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200) speaks of el huerto de parayso “the garden of Paradise”, and the Liber regum says that Manasseh was buried en so huerto “in his garden”.^[13]

Semantic evolution

The word long kept the Latin sense “garden, pleasure garden”, which Nebrija still gave about 1495 (uertos de plazer).^[3][14] The Diccionario de Autoridades described it in 1734 as a small walled plot planted with fruit trees for pleasure and sometimes with vegetables for the house, and quoted proverbs such as Huerto, y tuerto, y mozo, y potro, y muger que mira mal, quierense saber tratar, advising skill where reason is not enough.^[15] Today it is a small plot, usually fenced, for vegetables, legumes and fruit trees.^[7]

The augmentative and collective huerta, for a larger irrigated area, is recorded as early as the Cantar de mio Cid, and is shared with Portuguese, Catalan and Occitan.^[3][6] In colloquial Spanish llevar al huerto means to talk someone round, or to seduce them.^[7][16]

Timeline

• 1107 – uerto in a charter, the first record.^[3][6]
• c. 1140 – the derivative huerta in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[3][6]
• c. 1200 – el huerto de parayso in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar.^[13]
• 1232 – uortolano “gardener”, later hortelano, in a document of Sahagún.^[3]
• 1290 – ortaliza “vegetables”, later hortaliza.^[3][6]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija still has uertos de plazer “pleasure gardens”.^[3]
• 1571 – the word is recorded in Mexico City.^[5]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it and records proverbs with it.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from Latin hortus.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small plot of ground, usually fenced, where vegetables, legumes and fruit trees are grown; a kitchen garden or orchard: Detrás de la casa tenemos un huerto con tomates y perales.^[7][16][1]

Word family

• huerta
• hortaliza
• hortelano
• hortal
• huertano

Related words

• horticultor
• horticultura
• jardín
• Latin hortus
• Portuguese horto
• Catalan hort

Usage notes

Llevar or llevarse a alguien al huerto is colloquial for persuading someone, or for seducing them.^[7][16] Moliner treats huerta as a synonym; the DCECH describes it as the augmentative and collective form.^[16][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. huerto
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, 420
4. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. güertu
5. ^ 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. güerto
6. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. huerto
7. ^ a b c d e 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. huerto
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4194
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 3294
10. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. huerto
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. huerto
14. ^ 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. huerto
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 186
16. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. huerto
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 578