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maza

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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word maza

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Inherited
First attested
1272–1275 Alfonso X, General Estoria More words from the 13th century
Inherited from
Latin *mattea
Ultimate origin
Latin mateola
Derivations

Pronunciation

  • /ˈmaθa/, [ˈma.θa], /ˈmasa/[1]

Forms

maza f (plural mazas)[1] In the Middle Ages the word had a voiceless ⟨ç⟩: Nebrija writes maça.[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *mattea, which seems to be a back-formation from Latin mateola (“mallet”).[2][4][5] The Latin word occurs only a couple of times in Cato, for a mallet to drive in a stake, and in Pliny, who quotes Cato.[2]

The same word is Portuguese maça, Catalan maça, French masse and Italian mazza; it is common to all the western Romance languages.[6][2][1] Castilian, Catalan and Gallo-Romance all require a base with -tt-, which Corominas does not explain by the influence of Latin mactō or Vulgar Latin *mattō, as Cornu did; he allows that Cato or his copyists still wrote ⟨t⟩ for /tt/.[2] The Catalan word is recorded from the 13th century, in Llull.[7]

De Vaan takes Cato's word as a diminutive of a noun for a hoe, from Proto-Italic *matejā-, and compares Sanskrit मत्य (matya, “club, harrow”), Old Church Slavonic мотыка (motyka, “hoe”) and Old High German medela (“plough”), from Proto-Indo-European *mot- (“club, hoe”).[8][1] Corominas finds the link uncertain in meaning, and doubts that the word is genuinely Latin; a Celtic origin has been proposed, but the related Romanian măciucă makes it less likely.[2] Covarrubias derived it from a Greek word for a breast, because of its shape, and the Academy's 1884 edition from a Greek word for a lump of metal.[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Alfonso X's General Estoria (1272–1275) describes how a man fights a crocodile in the Nile: he holds in his right hand a maça made for the purpose and thrusts it into the animal's throat.[11] Corominas's first records are Juan Manuel and Juan Ruiz, about 1330, though charters of 1177 and 1210 seem to have the word already.[2][4]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija already lists the maça for beating flax, the porter's mace and the hub of a cart wheel.[2] Autoridades describes the weapon, the heavy pile-driver for driving stakes into bridges and dikes, which some call maza de Fraga, and the mace that mace-bearers carry before kings, governors, cities and universities.[9] The Academy's dictionaries of the 19th century add the drumstick of the bass drum, the butt of a billiard cue, the log to which monkeys were chained, and the rag pinned on someone's clothes as a joke.[12][13][5]

The sense “wheel hub”, which the DLE marks as obsolete, lives on in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Cuba and the Canaries.[14][15][16] In Cuba, Puerto Rico and Honduras a maza is one of the rollers of a sugar mill.[5][14] Rhythmic gymnastics took the word for its club.[5] The masculine mazo is a secondary form.[2]

Timeline

  • late 11th century – the DEMel lists the word in the charters of Fanlo, and further records in 1135 and c. 1180.[17]
  • 1177, 1210 – charters that probably already contain it.[2][4]
  • 1239 – parral de Maça, a place name in a charter of Oña.[18]
  • 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General Estoria uses maça for a club.[11]
  • c. 1330 – Juan Manuel and Juan Ruiz, Corominas's first records.[2]
  • c. 1495 – Nebrija lists the flax-beater, the porter's mace and the wheel hub.[2]
  • 1528 – the first record from the Americas, in the Río de la Plata: a wooden club used to kill.[19]
  • 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the maza de Fraga.[9]
  • 1884 – the Academy derives the word from Greek.[10]

Meanings

Noun

  1. mace, club: an old weapon of wood shod with iron, or all of iron, with a thick head.[5][1]
  2. A heavy wooden tool for crushing esparto and flax, and for other uses; a mallet.[5][20]
  3. A leather-covered ball on a wooden handle for beating the bass drum.[5][1]
  4. The weight of a pile driver that strikes the heads of the piles.[5]
  5. The mace carried as an insignia by mace-bearers before certain authorities.[5]
  6. The thick end of a billiard cue.[5][1]
  7. (colloquial) A tiresome, boring person.[5]
  8. (sports) A bottle-shaped club used in rhythmic gymnastics, and the event performed with it.[5]
  9. (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Honduras) Each of the rollers of a sugar mill.[5][14]
  10. (Argentina, Uruguay; obsolete in Spain) The hub of a wheel.[5][14]

Word family

  • mazada
  • macero
  • mazar
  • maceta
  • mazazo
  • mazo
  • macear
  • mazagatos
  • Latin mateola
  • Portuguese maça
  • Italian mazza
  • English mace

Usage notes

La maza y la mona is said of two people who are always together.[5] Maza de Fraga is a pile driver, and colloquially a person whose word carries great authority.[5][9]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 893
  3. ^ 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, p. s.v. maza
  4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. maza
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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. maza
  6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. *mattea
  7. ^ 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, 338
  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 Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 520
  10. ^ 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. 687
  11. ^ a b 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. maza
  12. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 562
  13. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1104
  14. ^ a b c d Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. maza
  15. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 263
  16. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. maza 1
  17. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. maza
  18. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. maza
  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. maza
  20. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. maza

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Maza.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/maza. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·