hurón

Forms

hurón m (plural hurones)^[1] Old Spanish wrote furón (Moamín, Juan Manuel); Nebrija has hurón.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish furón, inherited from Late Latin fūrō (“ferret”), a derivative of fūr (“thief”), because the animal steals into rabbit burrows and carries off the rabbits.^[2][4][5][6] Wiktionary derives the Late Latin noun from the verb fūror (“to steal”) instead.^[1] The Late Latin word is recorded only in Isidore of Seville, who connected it with furvus (“dark”) because it digs dark, hidden tunnels.^[2] Coromines counts it as a Late Latin word of Hispania, recorded in the 7th century.^[7]

The same word survives in Portuguese furão, Galician furón, Old Occitan furon and Bearnese hurou; Catalan fura, Occitan fura and French furet are formed directly on the Latin word for “thief”.^[2][8] A second form, furó, is recorded from 1398.^[7]

The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰṓr (“thief”), like Greek φώρ (phṓr); de Vaan doubts the older view that Latin borrowed it from Greek.^[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Moamín, the book on hunting animals translated for Alfonso X (about 1250), which names the furones among the animals used in hunting besides dogs.^[3][10] Juan Manuel uses furón in the 14th century, and Nebrija defines hurón as the animal kept for hunting rabbits.^[2][11]

Semantic evolution

The figurative sense “a person who finds out what is hidden and secret” was in the Diccionario de Autoridades, with a quotation from the Pícara Justina: Ando echándola hurones.^[12] Terreros calls a curious, prying man a hurón, and notes that Oudin and Franciosini give hurona for the female.^[13] The Academy's 1884 edition has both figurative senses, the prying person and the unsociable one.^[14]

In the Americas the word appears in Santo Domingo in 1551 and in Cieza de León's chronicle of Peru in 1553.^[15][16] There it was applied to other animals: the grison in Nicaragua, Colombia and Ecuador^[17], the mongoose in Puerto Rico^[18], and a squirrel-like rodent in Mexico.^[19] In El Salvador it is criminal slang for the leader of a gang of thieves^[17], and in Chile it has meant a glutton.^[20]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – Moamín names furones among hunting animals.^[3]
• c. 1330 – Juan Manuel uses the form furón.^[4][2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: huron para caçar conejos, Latin viverra.^[2][11]
• 1551 – first record in the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[15]
• 1553 – Cieza de León praises the ferrets of Peru.^[16]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the sense “a person who finds out secrets”.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary adds the sense “unsociable person”.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. ferret, a small carnivorous mammal with a long, supple body, short legs and greyish fur, whose anal glands give off a foul smell; it is used to hunt rabbits because it goes into their burrows.^[5][1]
2. (colloquial) A person who pries into and finds out what is hidden or secret; a snoop.^[5][21]
3. (colloquial) An unsociable, shy person; also as an adjective: Su hermano es muy hurón y apenas sale de casa.^[5][21]
4. (Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador) The grison, Galictis vittata.^[17]
5. (Puerto Rico) The mongoose.^[18]

Word family

• huronear
• huronera
• huronero

Related words

• hurto
• hurtar
• furtivo
• Portuguese furão

Usage notes

A separate word hurón, taken from French Huron, names the Huron people of the Great Lakes region and their Iroquoian language.^[5][1] The female ferret is hurona.^[4][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 432
3. ^ 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. hurón
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hurto
5. ^ a b c d e f 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. hurón
6. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. hurón
7. ^ a b 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, 233
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. furo
9. ^ 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. fūr
10. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. hurón
11. ^ 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. hurón
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. hurón
13. ^ 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, 317
14. ^ 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. 581
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. hurón
16. ^ a b Grupo IATEXT, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, AMERLEX: corpus of americanisms in early texts on the Americas (online database), p. s.v. hurón
17. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. hurón
18. ^ 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. hurón
19. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 611
20. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 112
21. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hurón