junco

junco¹ reed, rush

Etymology tree of junco¹

inherited borrowed derived

Latin iūncus

Spanish junco

From the same root · junco¹

Latin iuncata ← iūncus

Pronunciation

• /ˈxunko/, [ˈxũŋ.ko]^[1]

Forms

junco m (plural juncos)^[1]

Etymology

The word for the rush is inherited from Latin iuncus (“rush, reed”); Old Spanish junco was also written yunco.^{[2][3][4][1][5]} It is a word in general use at all periods, and common to all the western Romance languages.^[2]

The same Latin word is Portuguese junco, Galician xunco, Asturian xunco, Catalan jonc, French jonc and Italian giunco.^[6][7][1] Meyer-Lübke took the Castilian and Portuguese forms for learned words, because the Catalan, Occitan and French forms with ⟨o⟩ show that the Latin /u/ was short.^[2][7] Corominas rejects this: he sees a special development of the vowel before /nk/, as in the Italian word, perhaps helped by the initial consonant, and compares tronco, ronco and bronco.^[2]

The southern form Mozarabic yunko has a /j/ at the start.^[2] A variant unco, general in Uruguay and Argentina and perhaps in Peru, is Mozarabic in the south of Spain, where it survives in derivatives; in the Americas it may be a hypercorrection, though a Mozarabic or Leonese origin is also possible there.^[2] Juan de Padilla wrote jonco beside the usual form, a type with /o/ that is widespread in the Pyrenees, and Upper Aragonese has chunco, or chonco in Echo.^[2][6]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *joinikos, and its likeliest cognates are Middle Irish áin (“rushes, reeds”) and Old Norse einir (“juniper”), which may share a stem with iūniperus (“juniper”).^[8][1] De Vaan derives it from that stem with a common Latin suffix, and finds that the stem gives the impression of being non-Indo-European.^[8] Wiktionary reports Matasović's view that the group, found only in western Indo-European, was borrowed from a substrate language.^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Mozarabic form yunko is recorded in 982 by Abenyólyol, and around 1100 an anonymous Mozarabic botanist uses it for the sedge.^[2][3] In Castilian the first hit of the CDH is the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy), where the infant Moses is placed in un arca de yuncos “an ark of rushes” and set on the river.^[9] A Leonese charter of 1126 already has the place name Val de Junco.^[2][10]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish texts use the word for the plant of wet places and for its stems, which were strewn on floors: Alfonso X's Estoria de España has a king order Juncos to be spread through the courtyards of the house.^[9][11] Covarrubias in 1611 notes that its soft, tough stems served for tying and for the little baskets in which country people carried curd cheese and fruit.^[12]

From the 18th century the dictionaries add junco de Indias, the cane of an Asian palm used for walking sticks, which the Academy in 1817 described as thinner and more flexible than the European rush.^[11][13] Hence the modern sense “walking stick”.^[4][14] In Andalusia and Chile junco also names the jonquil, otherwise junquillo.^[15][16] In the Americas the name passed to many local plants: the soyacal and the hats made of its leaves in Honduras, an amaryllis in Panama, several cacti and other plants in Mexico.^[17][18]

The derivative junquillo passed into Catalan, French jonquille (1596) and Italian giunchiglia.^[2][7] The English bird name junco is from the same Latin word, through New Latin junco.^[19]

Timeline

• 982 – the Mozarabic form yunko in Abenyólyol.^[2][3]
• 1126 – the place name Val de Junco in a Leonese charter.^[2]
• c. 1200 – yuncos in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar, in a 13th-century copy.^[9][5]
• 1209 – the derivative junquera in a charter.^[2][3]
• 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General Estoria names the plant.^[20]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin iuncus, papyrus and scirpus as its equivalents.^[21]
• 1519 – the first record from the Americas, xuncos in a Puerto Rican lagoon.^[22]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the uses of the stems for tying and basketwork.^[12]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records junco indiano, the cane used for walking sticks.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology iuncus for the first time.^[23]

Meanings

Noun

1. A rush: a plant of the rush family (Juncaceae) with smooth, cylindrical, flexible and pointed stems, dark green outside and white and spongy inside, that grows in damp places: La orilla del río estaba llena de juncos.^[4][1]
2. Each stem of this plant.^[4][24]
3. A walking cane, especially a thin one.^[4][14]
4. A sedge (Scirpus holoschoenus), common throughout Spain, with a creeping rhizome and finely grooved cylindrical stems.^[4][24]
5. (Andalusia, Chile) The jonquil (junquillo).^[15][16]
6. (Honduras) The soyacal plant, its dry leaf, and a hat made of it.^[17]

Word family

• juncal
• junquera
• junquillo
• juncoso
• enjuncar

junco² junk (ship)

Pronunciation

• /ˈxunko/, [ˈxũŋ.ko]^[1]

Forms

junco m (plural juncos)^[1]

Etymology

The word for the ship is borrowed from Portuguese junco, which is from Malay jong (“ship”).^{[2][25][4][1][26]} Corominas writes the Malay word jung.^[2][25] Gómez de Silva allows a Javanese source as well, and Cunha calls the Portuguese word probably Malay-Javanese.^[26][27] Wiktionary has the Malay word reach Portuguese through Arabic جنك (junk).^[1] Corominas reports the suggestion that the Malay word comes from an old Chinese word that was later lost in Chinese, and notes that the word spread from Portuguese to the other western languages, Italian among them, where it is recorded around 1510.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is of 1521.^[2][25] A letter of Legazpi's expedition to the Philippines (1565, printed 1566) explains it: un junco, que es navío de casi cient toneladas “a junk, which is a ship of almost a hundred tons”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The 16th-century descriptions make the junk a large ship, while later ones, written about other regions, make it a small boat.^[2] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as a light ship used in the East Indies, and the Academy's editions of the 19th century as a small vessel of the East Indies; the 1884 edition derived it from a Chinese word for “boat”.^[11][28][23] Eguílaz also traced it to Chinese.^[29] Today it names the light sailing ship of East Asia, whose sails are stiffened with bamboo battens.^[14][24]

Timeline

• 1345 – the Portuguese form joncos, Houaiss's first record;^[30] junquo in 1510.^[30]
• 1521 – the first record in Spanish.^[2][25]
• 1565 – a letter of Legazpi's expedition to the Philippines describes un junco of almost a hundred tons.^[2]
• 1585 – Fray Juan González de Mendoza uses the word.^[2]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as a light ship of the East Indies.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from Chinese.^[23]

Meanings

Noun

1. (nautical) A junk: a light sailing ship of China and East Asia: Un junco cruzaba la bahía al atardecer.^[14][24][1]