mangle

Forms

mangle m (plural mangles)^[1]

Etymology

It is an indigenous word of tropical America, perhaps borrowed from Taíno mangle; its source language is uncertain, and the DLE and Corominas call it Carib or Arawakan.^{[2][3][4][1][5]} Las Casas (c. 1560) says that the word belongs to the language of Hispaniola, and on his word Cuervo and Friederici accept a Taíno origin.^[2][6] Henríquez Ureña notes that 16th-century writers give it as a word of Santo Domingo, but Corominas reports his observation that its structure is not Arawakan, so that it may have been borrowed from a neighbouring language.^[7][2] The BDELC goes further and doubts that the word is indigenous at all.^[3]

The oldest form seems to be Portuguese mangue, kept in Portuguese and used by the first Castilian author to mention the tree;^[6] Corominas suggests that the /l/ arose by echo of the other liquid in the frequent derivative manglar.^[2] He and Friederici reject a Malay origin: the word appears before any real contact with Southeast Asia, and the Portuguese took it to the Moluccas only later.^[2][6] He also wonders whether it is related to manigua.^[2]

As another possibility Corominas considers mangla, mangra, descendants of Latin macula (“spot”), which in Italian and Catalan came to mean “thicket”, and the tree's name would then be a back-formation from the collective.^[2] He doubts it himself, because these words mean only “blight of wheat” or “labdanum” in Europe, and the tree's name is recorded forty years before the collective.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Fernández de Enciso in 1519 names a Golfo de los Mangues south of Cabo Frío in Brazil.^[2][6] A Puerto Rico record of the same year has mangles de unas raíces de árboles.^[8] The form mangle is in Fernández de Oviedo's Sumario of 1526, among the trees of the Indies.^[2][9] Las Casas describes ciertas raíces de árboles en la mar, que según la lengua desta Española se llaman mangles “certain roots of trees in the sea, which in the language of this island of Hispaniola are called mangles”.^[10][6]

Semantic evolution

The collective manglar follows about 1560, in Las Casas.^[2][3] Inland, far from salt water, the conquistadors applied manglar to swamps and bogs full of rotting roots, which have nothing to do with mangrove.^[6] Portuguese mangue is recorded from 1552.^[6]

The Academy's dictionary of 1817 describes the mangle as a tall, thick tree of the coasts of Spanish America with leaves like those of the pear tree, and also as its resin.^[11] Its edition of 1899 calls the word Taíno and the plant a shrub of the Rhizophoraceae whose branches send down shoots that take root.^[12] The DLE now says “Carib or Arawakan”, and DAMER records the word from Mexico to Peru, with many compound names such as mangle rojo.^[4][13]

Timeline

• 1519 – Fernández de Enciso's Golfo de los Mangues in Brazil;^[8] mangles in Puerto Rico.^[2][8]
• 1526 – Fernández de Oviedo has mangles in his Sumario.^[9][2]
• c. 1560 – Las Casas calls it a word of Hispaniola and records manglar.^[2][6]
• 1653 – Cobo says it is called mangle in the language of Hispaniola.^[6]
• 1817 – first in the Academy's dictionary, as a tree and its resin.^[11]
• 1899 – the Academy calls it a Taíno word.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. (botany) The red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), a tropical shrub three to four metres high whose long spreading branches send down shoots that root in the ground, with thick elliptical leaves, yellowish flowers and many aerial roots; its leaves, fruit and bark are used in tanning.^[4][13]
2. Any of several other trees of the mangrove swamps.^[6][13]

Word family

• manglar

Related words

• manigua
• Portuguese mangue

Usage notes

Mangle blanco and mangle negro name trees of the Verbenaceae (Avicennia) that grow shoots like the mangrove.^[4][14]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 810
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mangle
4. ^ a b c d 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
5. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter
7. ^ Henríquez Ureña, Pedro (2015), Obras completas, vol. 12: 1936–1940 III, ed. Miguel D. Mena, Santo Domingo: Ministerio de Cultura
8. ^ a b c 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. mangle
9. ^ a b Grupo IATEXT, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, AMERLEX: corpus of americanisms in early texts on the Americas (online database)
10. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía
13. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. mangle
14. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos