leñoso

Forms

leñoso (feminine leñosa, masculine plural leñosos, feminine plural leñosas)^[1]

Etymology

Corominas lists it among the derivatives of leña and dates it to 1555.^[2][3] Wiktionary analyses it as formed from Spanish leño + -oso.^[1] The DLE, Wiktionary and García de Diego trace it to Latin lignōsus (“woody”), and the REW lists it among the Romance outcomes of that word.^[4][1][5][6]

The same Latin word is Portuguese lenhoso, Galician leñoso, Catalan llenyós, Italian legnoso and Romanian lemnos.^[6][5][7] The Latin adjective is formed from lignum (“wood”) with the suffix -ōsus.^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is Laguna's translation of Dioscorides (1555), where Autoridades quotes Su raíz es gruessa y leñosa “its root is thick and woody”.^[2][9]

Semantic evolution

Autoridades in 1734 defined the word as “having the quality of or resembling wood”.^[9] The Academy's dictionary of 1843 gave two senses, the part of trees and shrubs that is called wood, and the hardness of wood in plants.^[10][4] In the Americas it appears in botanical descriptions from Lima in 1792 and Tucumán in 1794.^[11]

Timeline

• 1555 – first record, in Laguna's Dioscorides.^[2][3]
• 1572 – the next record in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[12]
• 1734 – Autoridades defines it as resembling wood.^[9]
• 1792 – first record in the Americas, in Lima.^[11]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin lignosus.^[13]

Meanings

Adjective

1. woody: of a shrub, plant, part of a plant or fruit, having the hardness and texture of wood (madera): un tallo leñoso.^[4][14][1]
2. (botany) As a feminine noun, a woody plant.^[4]

Related words

• leña
• leño
• leñero
• lignito
• Portuguese lenhoso

Usage notes

In botany vaso leñoso is a vessel of the xylem.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 631
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. leña
4. ^ a b c d e 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. leñoso
5. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5033
7. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 385
10. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández
11. ^ 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
12. ^ 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
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía
14. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos