lacayo

Forms

lacayo m (plural lacayos, feminine lacaya, feminine plural lacayas)^[1]

Etymology

Its origin is uncertain.^[2][3][4] In the DCECH Corominas's likeliest source is borrowed from Old Occitan lacai, an altered form of Old Occitan lecai (“glutton, greedy”), which is derived from lecar (“to lick”).^[3][4] This is Diez's etymology: the Occitan word is well recorded in the troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries, the change of sense fits the low character always ascribed to lackeys, and the change of pretonic /e/ to /a/ is common in Occitan.^[3] The oldest texts speak of lackeys from Gascony and the Basque country, and the soldiers of this name are placed in Catalonia, Aragon and the Pyrenees.^[3]

In the BDELC Corominas thinks it more likely that the word comes everywhere from Basque, since these mercenaries were most at home in the Basque country.^[4] There alokairu, ala-kairu and alokari mean “wage, day's pay, rent”, and lekaio means “lackey” and also a paid folk musician.^[4] The Basque words are from Latin locarium (“rent, pay”), the source of Old Spanish loguer, Catalan lloguer and French loyer.^[4][5] The Latin noun is formed from locus (“place”).^[6]

Spitzer derived it from alcaide, through supposed Catalan intermediate forms, and Meyer-Lübke and Wartburg accepted this, but Corominas rejects it: the key Catalan form is a misprint in Aguiló's dictionary, and the oldest Catalan forms were themselves taken from Spanish.^[3] García de Diego also places the word under Arabic قائد (qāʾid, “leader”).^[7] Bénaben further lists a Turkish word for “courier”.^[8] Covarrubias called it a German word brought to Spain with King Philip, and the Academy's dictionary of 1884 derived it from French.^[9][10]

Catalan has lacayo from 1472 and alacayo in 1490, Occitan several examples from the 15th century, and French laquais and alacays from the third quarter of that century.^[3] Italian lacchè, German Lakai and English lackey come from French.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are a poem of Villasandino in the Cancionero de Baena, from the early 15th century, and the Crónica de los Reyes Católicos of Hernando del Pulgar, about 1493.^[3][4] In Pulgar, as later in Zurita and Lanuza, it is a light foot soldier who went with the knights to war.^[3][11]

Semantic evolution

The sense “groom who walks beside his mounted master, liveried servant” is almost as old: it appears in a law of 1565 of the Nueva Recopilación, in Lope, Quevedo, Covarrubias and often in the Quijote.^[3][9] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined the servant in livery who follows his master on foot, on horseback or in the coach, and quoted the law that allowed no one more than two lackeys.^[11] The Academy's 1817 edition also listed a bow of ribbon that women wore hanging from the cuff of the shirt.^[12]

The modern figurative sense is a servile person, a flunkey, and the DLE lists the adjective lacayo “servile, abject”.^[2][13] Malaret records the adjective in Puerto Rico from 1917, and Santamaría the figurative sense in Mexico.^[14][15] In Puerto Rico it is also said of someone wholly loyal to the colonial regime.^[16] The first record from the Americas is from Lima, in 1556.^[17]

Timeline

• 1400–1425 – Villasandino, in the Cancionero de Baena.^[3][4]
• c. 1421–1440 – the Salamanca manuscript of the Libro de buen amor has the word.^[18][19]
• 1472 – first record in Catalan, as lacayo.^[3]
• c. 1493 – Hernando del Pulgar uses it for a foot soldier.^[3]
• 1556 – the first record from the Americas, in Lima.^[17]
• 1565 – a law in the Nueva Recopilación uses it for a servant on foot.^[3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias calls it a German word.^[9]
• early 17th century – the derivative lacayuno.^[4]
• 1817 – the Academy lists the women's ribbon bow.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from French laquais.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. (historical) A footman or lackey: a servant in livery whose main task was to accompany his master: Dos lacayos abrieron la portezuela del coche.^[2][1]
2. A groom who walks ahead of his master's mount; espolique.^[2]
3. (historical) Each of the two foot soldiers armed with crossbows who went with a knight to war, and who sometimes formed bodies of troops.^[2][13]
4. (historical) A hanging bow of ribbons that women wore on the cuff of the shirt or doublet.^[2]
5. (figurative) A person who serves another servilely, a flunkey: No quiero ser el lacayo de nadie.^[13][20]

Adjective

1. Servile, abject.^[2]
2. (obsolete) Of or proper to lackeys.^[2]

Word family

• lacayuno

Related words

• alquiler
• French laquais
• English lackey
• Portuguese lacaio

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. lacayo
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 546
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. lacayo
5. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 382
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1247
8. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. lacayo
9. ^ 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. 1059
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 625
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 345
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 513
13. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. lacayo
14. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 684
15. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 651
16. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. lacayo
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. lacayo
18. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
19. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. lacayo
20. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. lacayo