lenteja

Forms

lenteja f (plural lentejas)^[1] Old Spanish texts spell the word lenteias, lentegias, lentejas and, with dissimilation of the first vowel, lantejas.^[2][3] The variant lanteja is found in a manuscript of Juan Ruiz, in the glossaries edited by A. Castro and in the Guzmán de Alfarache;^[4] Autoridades still gives it beside lenteja.^[3][4]

Etymology

It continues inherited from Latin lenticula (“lentil”), a diminutive of lēns (“lentil”) with the same meaning.^[3][5][6][1] Wiktionary passes it through a syncopated Vulgar Latin *lenticla.^[1] Corominas notes that the Castilian form, like dialectal Italian lenteccia and Galician lentella, goes back to a form with a short /i/, while the Gallo-Romance, Catalan and Portuguese words continue a variant with a long /iː/.^[3]

The same Latin word is Portuguese lentilha, Asturian llenteya, Catalan llentilla, Occitan lentilha, French lentille and Italian lenticchia.^[7][8][1][9] In several of these languages it also means “freckle”.^[8][7] Wiktionary counts lentilla as a doublet.^[1]

The Latin base word resembles linsa (“lentil”) and Ancient Greek λάθυρος (láthuros, “pulse, chickling”) too closely for chance, but de Vaan finds that no common ancestor can be reconstructed: like other farming words, it may have been borrowed from a non-Indo-European language of Europe.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record in a Spanish text is in Almerich's Fazienda de Ultra Mar, dated about 1200 and kept in a 13th-century manuscript, where Esau's red dish is explained: Aquel conducho vermeio eran lenteias “that red food was lentils”.^[11][2] The Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215, in a 14th-century copy) has Zosimas take un poco de çebada e lentejas “a little barley and lentils”.^[11] Corominas dates the word from Juan Ruiz (stanza 1167c), and the BDELC gives 1335.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word named the legume and its seed, which 13th-century texts use in food and remedies: the Moamín (1250) prescribes husked lentils and lentil flour in remedies for hunting animals.^[11][12] The same text already calls duckweed lenteiuelas uerdiziellas, little green lentils that grow on water, the plant later called lenteja acuática or lenteja de agua.^[12][13]

In 1611 Covarrubias saw in the lentil a figure of temperance, because the poor of old were content with a pot of lentils.^[14] Terreros also records lenteja as a weight of Roman antiquity, an eighth of a drachm.^[15] The sense “lens-shaped weight at the end of a clock's pendulum” enters the Academy's dictionary in 1843.^[16][6]

In the youth slang of several South American countries lenteja is used as an adjective for a slow person, and in Uruguay as a disparaging name for someone who wears glasses.^[17][6]

Timeline

• 1200–1250 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar has the form lenteias.^[2][11]
• 1250 – the Moamín uses lentil flour in remedies and names duckweed lenteiuelas uerdiziellas.^[12][11]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor, the DCECH's first record.^[3][18]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija translates lentejas legumbre as Latin lens, lentis.^[18]
• 1513 – the first record from the Americas, two almudes of lentils in Puerto Rico.^[19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias makes the lentil a figure of temperance.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades describes the plant and its two kinds, white and grey-brown, and gives the variant lanteja.^[4]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary has lenteja acuática o de agua.^[13]
• 1843 – the pendulum weight is added as a sense.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin lenticula.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. The lentil plant (Lens culinaris), an annual legume with weak branching stems, white flowers veined with purple and short pods of two or three seeds.^[6][21]
2. The small, flat, brown edible seed of this plant: Los jueves comemos lentejas con arroz.^[6][1]
3. The lens-shaped weight at the end of a clock's pendulum.^[6][21]
4. (Uruguay, youth slang, derogatory) A person who wears glasses.^[6]

Adjective

1. (Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, youth slang) slow.^[17]

Word family

• lentejuela
• lentejar

Related words

• lentilla
• Latin lenticula
• Portuguese lentilha

Usage notes

Lenteja de agua or lenteja acuática is duckweed (Lemna minor), a small plant floating on still water whose fronds have the shape and size of a lentil.^[6][21] Moliner notes that the plant is called mata or planta de lentejas rather than una lenteja.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 630
4. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro
5. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. lenteja
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. lēns
11. ^ 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
12. ^ 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. lenteja
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real
14. ^ 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. 1078
15. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández
17. ^ 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. lenteja
18. ^ a b 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
19. ^ 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. lanteja
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies)
21. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos