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mancha

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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word mancha

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
c. 1250 Alfonso X, Lapidario More words from the 13th century
Inherited from
Latin *mancla via Old Spanish
Ultimate origin
Latin macula

Pronunciation

  • /ˈmant͡ʃa/, [ˈmãnʲ.t͡ʃa][1]

Forms

mancha f (plural manchas)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish mancha, inherited from Vulgar Latin *mancla, from Latin macula (“stain, spot”).[2][3][4][1] This is the DCECH's MANCHA I.[2] At an early date the nasal of the initial /m/ spread to the end of the first syllable, and the resulting form regularly gave the Castilian and Portuguese word, as Latin cingula gave cincha.[2][3] Corominas places the change at a stage *magla > *mangla, because of the voicing in the parallel mancilla.[2] He rejects a cross of the Latin noun with mancus (“maimed”), which García de Diego proposed, and Malkiel's *matula.[2][5] Gómez de Silva also starts from the nasalised Vulgar Latin form.[6]

The same Latin word is Portuguese mancha, which Corominas, against the REW, does not take as a loan from Castilian, and Italian macchia.[2][7] In Rhaeto-Romance, Gallo-Romance and Catalan the Germanic word behind taca has pushed it back to a few special senses.[2] The learned mácula and maculado are its doublets; malla “mesh” came from the same Latin word through French maille, and maqueta through Italian macchietta.[2][1]

De Vaan tentatively derives the Latin noun from Proto-Indo-European *smh₁-tlo- (“wiping”), comparing Ancient Greek σμάω (smáō, “to wipe clean”); he calls the semantics conceivable but not compelling.[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Alfonso X's Lapidario (c. 1250) describes a green stone that has una mancha uermeia “a red spot”.[9][10] The DCECH's first record is the General Estoria (c. 1280), and the DTME dates the word from 1240, the date of the Libro de Alexandre.[2][11] There, in a 15th-century copy, the manchas broken on a hauberk are the rings of mail, a sense Salvá still listed as obsolete in 1846.[9][12]

Semantic evolution

Medieval examples are scarce because mancilla was then used for the moral and figurative senses, and for some physical ones.[2] Alfonso X already used the word for a piece of land that differs from its surroundings.[10] Covarrubias (1611) gave the sense “anything that spoils and tarnishes”, as in mancha en un linage, and the sense “territory”, which he linked to the region of La Mancha.[13] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1734) defined the dishonour sense.[14] The Academy's 1817 edition recorded the phrase no es mancha de judío and the proverb no temas mancha que sale con agua.[15] In 1884 it added a stand of trees or plants and the dark regions of the sun and moon.[16]

In Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia mancha is a children's chasing game and, in Argentina, the child who chases.[17][4][18] In Argentina and the River Plate it also named an anthrax-like disease of cattle, described at the end of the 18th century.[19][20] In Guatemala and Peru it is a group of close friends, in Mexico a swarm of locusts or crabs, and in the eastern Canaries a dark shoal of fish.[17][21][22] Tagalog mantsa was borrowed from it.[1]

Timeline

  • c. 1250 – Alfonso X's Lapidario has a red mancha on a green stone.[9][10]
  • 1256 – a deed of gift names a place en la Mancha.[9]
  • c. 1275 – the General Estoria describes a bull with a white spot shaped like the new moon.[9]
  • 1280 – the General Estoria uses it for a stretch of land, la mancha de Mont Aragón.[10]
  • first half of the 14th century – the verb manchar is first recorded.[3]
  • c. 1495 – Nebrija pairs mancha with manzilla, Latin macula.[23]
  • 1563 – first record from the Americas, in Yucatán.[24]
  • 1611 – Covarrubias records the figurative and the territorial senses.[13]
  • 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades.[14]
  • 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology and the senses of plants and astronomy.[16]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A stain or mark that something leaves on a surface, usually dirtying or spoiling it: Tenía una mancha de vino en la camisa.[4][1]
  2. A spot or patch of a different colour from the rest of something.[4][1]
  3. A piece of land that differs from the land around it.[4]
  4. A stand of plants that sets a piece of land apart from its neighbours.[4]
  5. (figurative) Dishonour, a blemish on one's name.[4][1]
  6. A shoal of fish (majal).[4][22]
  7. A flock or herd.[4][21]
  8. (astronomy) One of the dark parts of the sun or moon (mácula).[4]
  9. (painting) A study made with brush and colours on canvas or board to observe the effect of light.[4]
  10. (Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia) A children's game of tag;[17] (Argentina) the child who chases the others in it.[4][17]
  11. (Nicaragua, Honduras) A game of spinning tops.[4][17]
  12. (Guatemala, Peru, colloquial) A group of close friends; a gang.[17][1]

Word family

  • manchar
  • manchón
  • quitamanchas
  • sacamanchas
  • manchado
  • desmanchar
  • mácula
  • inmaculado
  • malla
  • mangla
  • maqueta
  • Latin macula
  • Italian macchia

Usage notes

The DLE has two other words spelled mancha.[4] Mancha³, “bellows of a forge or organ”, used in Aragon and Murcia, is from Catalan manxa, from Latin mantica “small bag, saddlebag”; it is the DCECH's MANCHA II, first recorded in Peralta's Aragonese dictionary of 1836, and its -nch- from Latin -ntic- is regular only in Catalan.[4][25][26] Mancha² is the region of La Mancha, in the plant name jabonera de la Mancha.[4] Asín Palacios and Gómez de Silva take the region's name from an Arabic word for a high plain, while Corominas leaves its origin open.[27][6][2] The DLE records the idiom cundir como mancha de aceite “to spread like an oil stain”, said of news, and the Puerto Rican mancha de plátano, the character of the typical Puerto Rican.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ 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, 797
  3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mancha
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q 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. mancha
  5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. mancha
  6. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 440
  7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5212
  8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  9. ^ 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, p. s.v. mancha
  10. ^ a b c d 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. mancha
  11. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. mancha
  12. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 685
  13. ^ 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. 1108
  14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 472
  15. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 547
  16. ^ 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. 669
  17. ^ a b c d e f Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. mancha
  18. ^ Segovia, Lisandro (1911), Diccionario de argentinismos, neologismos y barbarismos, Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Coni Hermanos, p. 238
  19. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 533
  20. ^ Granada, Daniel (1890), Vocabulario rioplatense razonado, 2nd ed., Montevideo: Imprenta Rural, p. 266
  21. ^ a b Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 688
  22. ^ a b Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. mancha
  23. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 376
  24. ^ 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. mancha
  25. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 799
  26. ^ Borao, Jerónimo (1908), Diccionario de voces aragonesas, 2nd ed., Zaragoza: Imprenta del Hospicio Provincial, p. 258
  27. ^ Asín Palacios, Miguel (1944), Contribución a la toponimia árabe de España, 2nd ed., Madrid: CSIC, p. 58

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Mancha.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/mancha. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

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