lirio

Forms

lirio m (plural lirios)^[1] Old Spanish wrote lilio, lilyo, liljo and lirio or liryo.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish lilio, borrowed from Latin līlium (“lily”).^[4][3][5][1] Corominas notes that the older form in Berceo and Alfonso de Palencia may be an artificial Latinism, while the form with ⟨r⟩ has since become thoroughly popular.^[4] The ⟨r⟩ is due to dissimilation of the two /l/ sounds, which Latin itself would have carried out if the word had not been foreign.^[4] The same dissimilation is found in Portuguese lírio, Catalan lliri (older llir), Galician lirio and Asturian liriu, while Aragonese lidio, Italian giglio and French lis went other ways.^[4][1][6]

Corominas, de Vaan and the OLD regard the Latin word and Ancient Greek λείριον (leírion) as independent borrowings from a Mediterranean language; de Vaan and the OLD compare a Coptic word for “lily”.^[4][7][8] Wiktionary instead derives the Latin word from the Greek one, and the Academy's dictionaries of 1884 and 1899 named both.^[1][9][10] From the French word Spanish took lis, a heraldic word frequent in Lope de Vega and Calderón.^[4][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Berceo's Poema de Santa Oria compares the saint to the lily and the rose: que mas bella que nin lilio nin rosa “more beautiful than either lily or rose”.^[11][4] The Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250, in a 15th-century copy) has the altars decked de rosas e de lirios.^[12] The DEMel's earliest form is lilyo in a botanical glossary of about 1100.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages and in Nebrija the white lily was lirio blanco or açucena, Latin lilium, and the iris was lirio cárdeno.^[4][13] Covarrubias in 1611 describes the flower as purple and like the madonna lily, also called iris for the colours of the rainbow, and mentions the oil made from its root.^[14] Autoridades quotes Laguna's Dioscorides: the iris, llamada en nuestro vulgar Español lirio cárdeno.^[15] The Academy's dictionaries from 1817 define the lirio as the medicinal iris, so that in modern Spanish it names chiefly the iris, while the lily is the azucena.^[16][5] Its root was used in medicine, and a Puerto Rican record of 1512 lists raíces de lirio.^[15][17]

In Cuba the name was given to the frangipani tree.^[18][19] In the Canaries it is a fish, Polymixia nobilis.^[20]

Timeline

• 1220–1250 – lilio in Berceo.^[3][4]
• c. 1400 – lirio in the Escorial glossary, Corominas's first record of this form.^[4][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: lirio blanco o açucena, Latin lilium.^[4][13]
• 1512 – the first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the purple flower called iris.^[14]
• early 17th century – the heraldic lis from French.^[3]
• 1817 – the Academy defines the medicinal lirio cárdeno, Latin Iris.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. iris, flag: a perennial plant of the iris family with sword-shaped leaves and large blue, purple or sometimes white flowers: En el jardín florecían los lirios morados.^[5][1]
2. The flower of this plant.^[21]
3. lirio blanco: the madonna lily.^[5]
4. lirio de los valles: lily of the valley, muguete.^[5][22]
5. lirio de agua: the calla.^[5]
6. lirio hediondo: the stinking iris, Iris foetidissima.^[5][22]
7. (Cuba) The frangipani tree.^[18]
8. (Canary Islands) A deep-sea fish, Polymixia nobilis.^[20]

Related words

• lis
• azucena
• Latin lilium
• English lily

Usage notes

The DLE has a second headword lirio, without etymology, for a small, big-headed fish of Galicia, the size of a sardine, which lives among rocks.^[5] In Spanish slang lirio means “fool”.^[23]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. lirio
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. lirio
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 664
5. ^ 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. lirio
6. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 5, 216
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 648
10. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 606
11. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. 274
12. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
13. ^ 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
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. 1089
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 415
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 532
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. lirio
18. ^ a b Pichardo, Esteban (1875), Diccionario provincial casi-razonado de vozes y frases cubanas, 4th ed., La Habana: Imprenta El Trabajo, p. 224
19. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1039
20. ^ a b Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org
21. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. lirio
22. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. lirio
23. ^ León, Víctor (1980), Diccionario de argot español y lenguaje popular, Madrid: Alianza Editorial