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jardín

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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word jardín

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1379–1384 Juan Fernández de Heredia, translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives More words from the 14th century
Borrowed from
French jardin
Ultimate origin
Proto-Indo-European *gʰórdʰos
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
French jardin
Italian giardino
Spanish jardín
From the same root
Spanish jardinero ← jardin

Pronunciation

  • /xaɾˈdin/, [xaɾˈð̞ĩn][1]

Forms

jardín m (plural jardines)[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French jardin, a Romance diminutive of Old French jart (“garden, orchard”), from Frankish *gard (“enclosure, hedge”).[2][3][4] The DHLF traces the French word to a Gallo-Roman form *hortus gardinus (“enclosed garden”), the second part from Frankish *gart or *gardo;[5][6] Gómez de Silva gives Vulgar Latin *gardinus.[5][6] The Frankish word is from Proto-Germanic *gardô (“enclosure, garden, house”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰórdʰos (“hedge, fence, enclosure”).[1][7][8]

Its Germanic cognates include Old High German gart (“circle, ring”), Old English ġeard (“enclosure”) and the English word yard.[2][4] The English word garden was borrowed from the Norman and Picard variant gardin, which kept the original consonant, while German Garten is an independent formation from the same root.[2][3] The same Indo-European root is in hortus (“garden”), the source of huerto.[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first hits in the CDH are in Juan Fernández de Heredia's translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives (1379–1384), where a man has a jardin better than all others for its waters and resting places.[11] Corominas dated the word only to Nebrija's dictionary (1495), with Nebrija's Latin horti and xystus, and then to Cristóbal de las Casas in 1570;[2][3][12] DICCA-XV records it from 1458–1467.[2][3][12]

Semantic evolution

Corominas calls jardín a deeply rooted Gallicism, already very frequent in the classical writers such as the Quijote, where it sounded distinguished; in the Middle Ages, as in Latin, the word for a garden was huerto, which popular speech in parts of Spain still uses.[2] Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary glossed horti as el jardin para plazer, the garden for pleasure.[12]

The Diccionario de Autoridades (1734) defines it as a pleasure garden of flowers and fragrant herbs laid out in beds, and adds a place full of beautiful people or delightful things, the latrine of a ship, the flaw in an emerald, and in thieves' cant a merchant's shop or a fair.[13] It notes that Covarrubias gave several etymologies and leaned towards a German origin.[13]

In the Americas jardín is recorded from 1516; in 1571 Molina's Nahuatl dictionary glosses xochitla with it.[14] Baseball has made it the outfield, or each of its zones, in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and in Colombia it is a nursery school.[15][16] In Spanish theatre slang meterse en un jardín was said of actors lost in improvised dialogue; it now means to get into an awkward tangle.[17][1] Spanish lent the word to Tagalog, Cebuano and Hiligaynon as hardin.[1]

Timeline

  • 1379–1384 – Fernández de Heredia's translation of Plutarch uses jardin.[11]
  • 1458–1467 – the first record in DICCA-XV.[12]
  • 1495 – Nebrija's Spanish–Latin dictionary, the first record Corominas gives, with jardinero and jardinería.[2][3]
  • 1516 – the first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo, of the islands called Jardines of the King and the Queen off Cuba.[14]
  • 1570 – Cristóbal de las Casas's Italian–Spanish dictionary.[2]
  • 1611 – Covarrubias defines the iardin as a pleasure garden of flowers and fragrant herbs, with fountains and beds.[18]
  • 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the ship's latrine and the emerald's flaw.[13]

Meanings

Noun

  1. garden: a piece of ground where plants are grown for ornament: Los domingos comemos en el jardín.[4][1]
  2. (nautical) A latrine on a ship.[4][19]
  3. A spot or flaw that dulls an emerald.[4][19]
  4. (baseball, Mexico, Central America, Caribbean) The outfield, or each of its zones.[15][16]
  5. (Colombia) A nursery school; elsewhere jardín de infancia, jardín de infantes or jardín de niños.[15][4][1]
  6. (colloquial) A complicated tangent or mess one gets into (meterse en un jardín).[1][17]

Word family

  • jardinero
  • jardinera
  • jardinería
  • enjardinar
  • jardincillo

Usage notes

Jardín botánico is a botanical garden and jardín de infancia a kindergarten.[4] In Bédar (Almería) jardín was unused among country people, who called the flower garden next to the house a huerto.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ 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, 496
  3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. jardín
  4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. jardín
  5. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. jardin
  6. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. jardín
  7. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  8. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  9. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
  10. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
  11. ^ 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. jardín
  12. ^ a b c d 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. jardín
  13. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 317
  14. ^ 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. jardín
  15. ^ 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. jardín
  16. ^ 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. jardín
  17. ^ a b León, Víctor (1980), Diccionario de argot español y lenguaje popular, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, p. s.v. jardín
  18. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1011
  19. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. jardín

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Jardín.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/jard%C3%ADn. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

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