ijada

Forms

ijada f (plural ijadas)^[1] Old Spanish texts write yjada, hijada and ygada.^[2][3][4] Autoridades noted in 1734 that many wrote the word with h-, but held that, coming from Latin ilia, it should be written without it.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *īliāta, a Romance derivative of Latin īlia (“flanks, lower belly”).^[6][7][8][1] The same formation is Catalan illada, in Jaume Roig, and the Old Aragonese illada of the Poema de Yúçuf.^[6][9] Beside it stand other derivatives of the Latin word: ijar, Portuguese ilhal, Portuguese ilharga (1712) and Galician illarga, the last two from Vulgar Latin *iliatica.^[6] Direct descendants of the Latin plural survive in Occitan, Old French, Romansh, Romanian and the dialects of Italy, so Corominas thinks that the Spanish word may be a purely Ibero-Romance derivative of a primitive *ija, soon lost through homonymy.^[6][10]

The Latin noun is a neuter plural;^[1][11] Wiktionary gives its singular as īle.^[1][11] De Vaan finds no etymology for it: the Germanic words compared by Walde and Hofmann have a short vowel, and Ancient Greek ἴλια (ília), a Hesychian word for female body parts, may be borrowed from Latin.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora (stanza 537), a text of 1220–50 known from an 18th-century copy.^[6][7][2] A pregnant abbess, waking after her child has been taken away, feels herself all over: Palpóse con sus manos quando fo recordada, por vientre, por costados e por cada ijada “She felt herself with her hands when she awoke, over her belly, her sides and each flank”.^[2] The word meant the flank of the body, between the ribs and the hip.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

In the 13th century the word was used of animals as well as people: Moamín's hunting book (1250) praises hawks with broad yjadas, and the Libro de los caballos (c. 1275) has a horse spurred on the hijadas.^[2] Alfonso X's Lapidario places a star in the left flank of the figure of Aquarius.^[4] Nebrija distinguished the ijada of fish, Latin abdomen or sumen, from the pain in the flank, ileon.^[13] Covarrubias in 1611 explained the name of the illness dolor de ijada, Latin morbus iliacus, noted that the flank of tuna was the choicest cut, and recorded the phrase tener su ijada.^[14] Autoridades added the cut of pork between the ham and the shoulder.^[5]

The pain in the flank gave the name of a stone: piedra de la ijada (1569), used by the Spanish in the Americas as a remedy for renal colic, passed into French as ejade (1665), later jade, and returned to Spanish as jade in 1734.^[15][16] The verb ijadear (1569, Ercilla), “to heave the flanks when out of breath”, lost its first syllable to become jadear “to pant”; both forms are in Cervantes, and ijadear survives in Guanajuato and Chile.^[6][7] In Argentina ijada was used of a whole cowhide.^[6] The first record from the Americas is from Tierra Firme in 1515, dolor de yjada.^[17]

Timeline

• 1220–1250 – first record, in Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora.^[6][7]
• 1250 – Moamín's Libro de los animales que cazan uses yjadas of hawks.^[2]
• c. 1275 – the Libro de los caballos has hijadas of a horse.^[2]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary glosses abdomen as the thick flank of a fish.^[13]
• 1515 – the first record from the Americas, dolor de yjada in Tierra Firme.^[17]
• 1569 – piedra de la ijada and the verb ijadear are first recorded.^[15][7]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the phrase tener su ijada.^[14]
• 1734 – Autoridades defines the word and adds the cut of pork.^[5]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology, from Latin ilia.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. flank: each of the two hollows lying on either side between the false ribs (costillas) and the hip bones; ijar.^[8][19][1]
2. A pain felt in that part of the body.^[8][1]
3. (ichthyology) In fish, the front lower part of the body, the belly: Pidió ijada de bonito a la plancha.^[8][19][20]

Word family

• ijadear
• jadear
• jadeo
• jadeante

Related words

• ijar
• jade
• ilion
• Latin īlia
• Catalan illada

Usage notes

The phrase tener algo su ijada is said of something that, among its good points, has one that is not so good.^[8][14][5] A separate ijada “ox goad”, from Vulgar Latin *aquiliata, a reduced form of aguijada, is regional, recorded in Soria, Burgos, Cantabria, Andalusia, Murcia and the Canaries.^[21][22][23]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. ijada
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. ijada
4. ^ 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. ijada
5. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 209
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 441
7. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ijada
8. ^ 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. ijada
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. *iliata
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4260
11. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ 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. ijada
14. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1037
15. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. jade
16. ^ 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. jade
17. ^ 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. ijada
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 584
19. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ijada
20. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. ijada
21. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. *aquiliata
22. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. ijada
23. ^ Sevilla, Alberto (1919), Vocabulario murciano, Murcia: Imprenta de Sucesores de Nogués, p. 106