melón

Forms

melón m (plural melones)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin mēlō (“melon”), a shortening of mēlopepō (“apple-shaped melon”), from Ancient Greek μηλοπέπων (mēlopépōn, “a kind of melon”).^[2][3][4][1] The Greek word is a compound of μῆλον (mêlon, “apple; tree fruit”) and πέπων (pépōn, “ripe; melon”).^[2][5][6] Gómez de Silva and the DHLF consider the Greek word for “apple” a word of a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean language.^[5][7]

The same Late Latin word is Catalan meló, Occitan melon and French melon, while Portuguese melão shows by its kept /l/ that it is a learned word, as the old Italian mellone may be; the usual Italian word is popone.^[2][8] Corominas adds that the word may be a more or less old learned one everywhere, though French has it from the 13th century and its form there points to long popular use.^[2][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first reliable hit is a Spanish translation, of after 1350, of the Historia de Jerusalem abreviada of Jacobo de Vitriaco, which lists cogonbros & melones & calabaças “cucumbers, melons and gourds”.^[9] Corominas dates the first record to a glossary of the Escorial of about 1400.^[2][3] An earlier hit in the Historia de la donzella Teodor, which advises sowing melons in February, is known only from a copy of 1500–1503.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso de Palencia (1490) explained Latin melo and added that the people called the fruit melón, and Nebrija called it a well-known fruit.^[2][10] Autoridades recorded melón de agua, a Murcian name for the watermelon, the melón de Indias, and the phrases catar el melón “to sound someone out” and decentar el melón, said when one fears that something once begun will keep going wrong.^[11][4]

Figurative senses are colloquial: a dull or foolish man, from the Academy's dictionary of 2001 on, and the human head, especially a big or shaven one.^{[12][4][13][14]} In Spanish slang melones are large breasts, a sense also of the River Plate.^[15][1] Regional senses include “money” in Cuba and, in northeastern Mexico, hornless cattle.^[16][17] The word was borrowed into Paraguayan Guarani as merõ.^[1]

Timeline

• after 1350 – the translation of Jacobo de Vitriaco's Historia de Jerusalem abreviada lists melones.^[9]
• c. 1400 – a glossary of the Escorial.^[2][3]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia says the people call the fruit melón.^[2]
• 1495 – Nebrija records melón and melonar.^[3][10]
• 1532 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico: melones, maíz e frisoles.^[18]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records melón de agua and catar el melón.^[11]
• 1899 – the Academy derives it from Latin melo, melonis.^[19]

Meanings

Noun

1. (botany) The melon plant, Cucumis melo, an annual of the gourd family with trailing stems, tendrils, five-lobed leaves and yellow flowers.^[4][13][1]
2. The fruit of this plant, large and oval, with a white, yellow or green rind and sweet, juicy, scented flesh round a hollow full of seeds: De postre tomamos melón con jamón.^[4][13]
3. (colloquial) A dull or foolish man.^[4][13]
4. (colloquial) The head, especially a big, bald or close-cropped one.^[13][14]
5. (colloquial, figurative) A thorny matter, a can of worms, in abrir el melón.^[1]
6. (colloquial, chiefly in the plural) Breasts.^[15][1]

Word family

• melonar
• melonero

Related words

• sandía
• pepino
• Latin melopepo

Usage notes

Melón de agua is the watermelon, the sandía.^[4] A separate melón “a kind of badger or mongoose” comes from a Hispano-Latin melo, -ōnis, a derivative of Latin meles (“badger”): Nebrija records it as an animal like the badger, the Breve diccionario finds it as a literary nickname in 1330 (Don Melón of the Libro de buen amor), it lives on in the Aragonese of Ansó and in Asturian, and the Academy has listed it since 1899; the DLE now refers it to meloncillo, the mongoose.^{[2][3][20][21]}

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 11
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. melón
4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. melón
5. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 454
6. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ 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, 557
9. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. melón
10. ^ 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, p. s.v. melón
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. melón
12. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. melón
13. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. melón
14. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. melón
15. ^ a b León, Víctor (1980), Diccionario de argot español y lenguaje popular, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, p. s.v. melón
16. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. melón
17. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 715
18. ^ 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. melón
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 649
20. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. melón
21. ^ 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. melón 2