jarope

Forms

jarope m (plural jaropes)^[1] Old Spanish wrote xarope, and axarope with the Arabic article in the Escorial glossary, the Cancionero de Baena and Gordonio;^[1] xarop occurs in the Gran conquista de Ultramar.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish xarope, borrowed from Andalusian Arabic شراب (šaráb, “drink, potion; syrup”), from Arabic شراب (šarāb, “drink”), a noun of the verb meaning “to drink”.^[2][3] It is the same word as jarabe, which kept the ⟨a⟩ of the Arabic.^[2][1] The ⟨o⟩ is the form common to the other Romance languages: Portuguese xarope, Catalan xarop, Occitan eissarop, Italian sciroppo, French sirop and Medieval Latin siruppus.^[2][3]

Corominas follows Steiger in explaining the stressed /o/ as the Arabic vowel made back and rounded between the /r/ and the /b/, a change also seen in Marruecos.^[2] The Academy, Américo Castro and Neuvonen derived it instead from another Arabic noun of the same root, whose vowel would explain the /o/ more easily;^[4] Corominas rejects this because that word chiefly meant brackish, barely drinkable water.^[2] Cunha likewise derives the Portuguese word from the common Arabic noun through a form with /o/.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DCECH finds xarope often from the 13th century on, beginning with the Calila of 1251.^[2][6] Alfonso X's Lapidario uses it for a medicinal syrup: los fisicos meten las en los xaropes “the physicians put them in the syrups”.^[7] In the Libro de buen amor Juan Ruiz writes non lo sana mengía, enplasto nin xarope “no medicine, plaster or syrup heals him”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word named a sweet medicinal drink.^[7] Autoridades (1734) defined it as a liquid drink given to the sick, made chiefly of clarified sugar, and added the sense of a bitter draught or unpleasant drink, quoting the Amadís on the bitter syrups of fortune.^[8] The Academy has since made it a synonym of jarabe, keeping the colloquial sense of a bitter or unpleasant drink.^[9] Moliner adds the colloquial sense of a setback or annoyance.^[10]

Timeline

• 1251 – xarope in the Calila e Dimna.^[6][2]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses it for a medicinal syrup.^[7]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija pairs it with julepe, glossed by Latin potio.^[11]
• 1734 – Autoridades enters xarope with the medical and the figurative sense.^[8]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary refers it to jarabe.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. syrup; a jarabe.^[9][1]
2. (colloquial) A bitter or unpleasant draught: Me dieron un jarope que no había quien se lo bebiera.^[9][10]
3. (colloquial) A setback or annoyance.^[10]

Word family

• jaropear
• jaropeo

Related words

• jarabe
• sorbete
• Portuguese xarope

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 498
3. ^ a b Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. jarabe
4. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. 265
5. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 3547
6. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. jarope
7. ^ 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. jarope
8. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 537
9. ^ a b c 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. jarope
10. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. jarope
11. ^ 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. jarope
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 614