lenzuelo

Forms

lenzuelo m (plural lenzuelos)^[1] Documents of 1166 and 1195 have the forms linçolo and linzols.^[2] Old Spanish also wrote lençuelo and linçuelos.^[2][3] García de Diego records linzuelo and, in Burgos, orzuelo for the threshing cloth.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish lençuelo, inherited from Latin linteolum (“small linen cloth”).^[5][1][4][3] Corominas treats it among the derivatives of lienzo, which continues the Latin base linteum (“linen cloth”).^[6]

The same Latin word is Portuguese lençol, Galician lenzó, Catalan llençol, French linceul and Italian lenzuolo.^[4][7][1] The French word, first Old French linçol about 1050, kept the sense “bedsheet” until the 17th century; the sense “shroud”, found from the 13th century, then replaced it.^[8]

The Latin noun is a diminutive of that base with the suffix -olum.^[9][1] The DHLF derives the base from līnum (“flax”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest Castilian text with the word in the Old Spanish Textual Archive is the Disputa del alma y el cuerpo, from the first decade of the 13th century.^[10] Berceo's Duelo has Recibiala la Madre en muy blancos lenzuelos “the Mother received it in very white cloths”, where Lanchetas glosses the word as “linen, sheet”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In Medieval Latin linteolum meant a shroud, an altar cloth, a bedsheet and linen cloth in general.^[12] Nebrija's Latin dictionary of 1492 used lençuelo to translate linteolum.^[3] Autoridades in 1734 defined lenzuelo as a small handkerchief, quoting Quevedo.^[13] From 1817 the Academy marked it as obsolete in that sense, and in 1899 it added the sense of a strong cloth the size of a sheet, used at threshing to carry straw.^[14][15] In the Americas the word appears in Mexico in 1580 and in Costa Rica in 1672 for a handkerchief.^[16]

Timeline

• 1166 – the form linçolo in a document.^[2]
• 1201–1210 – the Disputa del alma y el cuerpo.^[10]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo writes lenzuelos “sheets” in the Duelo.^[11]
• 1492 – Nebrija translates Latin linteolum as lençuelo.^[3]
• 1580 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico.^[16]
• 1734 – Autoridades defines it as a small handkerchief.^[13]
• 1899 – the Academy adds the threshing cloth.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A strong linen cloth (lienzo) about the size of a bedsheet, with a cord at each corner, used at threshing (trilla) to carry straw and for other tasks.^[5][17]
2. (rare) A pocket handkerchief (pañuelo).^[5]
3. (obsolete) A sheet for a bed (sábana).^[1][11]

Related words

• lienzo
• lenzal
• Portuguese lençol
• Catalan llençol
• French linceul

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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 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
4. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
5. ^ 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. lenzuelo
6. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 646
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b 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
11. ^ a b c Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra
12. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 385
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía
16. ^ 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
17. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos