jaspe

Forms

jaspe m (plural jaspes)^[1] Old Spanish has iaspis in the Libro de Alexandre, iaspes in the Poridat de las poridades and iaspio in Alfonso X's Lapidario.^[2][3][4] The Gran conquista de Ultramar writes jaspe or jaspre.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin iaspis (“a precious stone like agate”), from Ancient Greek ἴασπις (íaspis).^[2][5][6][1] The Greek word is a loan from the East: Beekes compares יָשְׁפֵה (yāšəfēh) and yašpû, the name of a stone, and asks whether it is Egyptian in origin.^[7] The DHLF adds that the Semitic word may itself be a loan from an unknown language.^[8]

The same Latin word gave Portuguese jaspe, Catalan jaspi and French jaspe.^[9][10][8] Medieval Latin and several Romance languages altered it to diasprum, whence Italian diaspro, the source of diaspro and diáspero.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250, in an early 15th-century copy) names jaspes e dïamantas among the precious stones of the rivers of paradise.^[3] The DCECH's first record is the iaspis of the same poem, and every early text it cites uses the word for a precious stone.^[2] The Poridat de las poridades (c. 1250) says of el iaspes that poisons cannot harm the man who carries it.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In the Gran conquista de Ultramar the word also names a silk cloth of several colours, like damask.^[2] Covarrubias in 1611 suspected that the ancient precious stone was not the stone called jaspe in his day, which was more a building stone than a gem.^[11] The sense “veined marble” is recorded from the 17th century.^[2] Autoridades (1734) described a spotted stone of several colours, a kind of marble that takes a polish, and quoted the jaspe crystalino of Cuzco cathedral.^[12] The Academy's dictionary of 1884 gave a mineralogical definition, a fully opaque variety of silica, and kept “veined marble” as a second sense.^[13] In Guatemala and Nicaragua jaspe is also a dyeing technique: parts of the yarn are tied so that they do not take the dye.^[14]

Timeline

• 1240–1250 – iaspis and jaspes in the Libro de Alexandre.^[2][3]
• c. 1250 – iaspes in the Poridat de las poridades, iaspio in Alfonso X's Lapidario.^[3][4]
• c. 1300 – the Gran conquista de Ultramar uses the word for a silk cloth.^[2]
• 1555 – diáspero, from Italian, in Laguna.^[2]
• 1576 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico.^[15]
• 1611 – Covarrubias doubts that the stone of his day was the ancient gem.^[11]
• 1734 – Autoridades defines it as a spotted marble.^[12]
• 1917 – Alemany marks the sense “silk cloth” as obsolete.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. (mineralogy) jasper: an opaque, fine-grained siliceous stone of varied colours.^[6][1]
2. Veined marble (mármol).^[6]
3. (Guatemala, Nicaragua) A tie-dye technique in which parts of a skein are tied before dyeing, so that the cloth looks like snakeskin.^[14]

Word family

• jaspear
• jaspeado
• jaspón

Related words

• diaspro

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 499
3. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. jaspe
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. jaspe
5. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. jaspe
6. ^ 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. jaspe
7. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. ἴασπις
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. jaspe
9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1957
10. ^ 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, 882
11. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1013
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 318
13. ^ 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
14. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. jaspe
15. ^ 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. jaspe
16. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 981