merienda

Forms

merienda f (plural meriendas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin merenda (“a light afternoon meal”).^[2][3][1] The Latin noun is the gerundive of mereō (“to earn, deserve”), and seems at first to have been food given to labourers as part of their wage.^[4][5] A Roman grammarian notes that older Latin used it for the midday meal.^[4][6]

The same Latin word is Portuguese merenda, Galician merenda, Asturian merienda, Aragonese brenda, Catalan berena, Occitan merenda, Old French marende, Italian merenda and Romanian merinde.^[7][8][9] Basque berenda was borrowed from the Romance word.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's Breve diccionario dates the first record 1220–1250.^[2] Berceo, closing a section of his Del sacrificio de la misa, tells his readers: avetlo por yantar, esperat la merienda “take this as your midday meal, and wait for the afternoon one”.^[11] The Fueros of Cáceres and Usagre fine any craftsman who asks for a merienda for his work, a use that recalls the Latin meal given as part of a wage.^[11][4]

Semantic evolution

The Diccionario de Autoridades (1734) says that strictly the word meant a small meal at midday, taken while waiting for the main meal at supper, but that by then it usually meant the meal taken in the afternoon before supper; in Murcia and elsewhere it still named the midday meal.^[12] It also records the jocular sense “hump” and the phrase hacer merienda de negros “to muddle a business in order to take the profit”.^[12] The Academy's 1884 dictionary has merienda de negros in its modern sense of a chaotic mess, and juntar meriendas “to pool one's interests”.^[13]

In Mexico and Ecuador merienda means supper, in Nicaragua and Colombia a snack after the main meal, and in El Salvador a fried pork and vegetable mixture served with other dishes.^[14] In the River Plate it is also the snack children take to school.^[15] The word was borrowed by Tagalog, merienda.^[1]

Timeline

• 1220–1250 – Berceo's Del sacrificio de la misa has merienda; the verb merendar appears in the same years.^[11][2]
• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre (in a 15th-century copy) has a ora de merienda.^[11]
• 1242–1275 – the Fuero de Usagre fines craftsmen who ask for a merienda.^[11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin merenda and prandium.^[16]
• 1515 – the first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[17]
• 1734 – Autoridades records the sense “hump” and hacer merienda de negros.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary records juntar meriendas.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A light meal taken in the middle of the afternoon; an afternoon snack: Los niños toman pan con chocolate de merienda.^[3][1]
2. A meal taken at midday.^[3][12]
3. A gathering of people to have an afternoon meal together.^[3]
4. (colloquial) A hump (joroba), hunchback.^[3][12]
5. (Mexico, Ecuador) Supper (cena).^[14]

Word family

• merendero
• merendona

Related words

• merendar
• merecer
• Latin merenda

Usage notes

Merienda de negros means a muddle in which nobody understands anyone;^[3][13] juntar meriendas means to pool one's interests.^[3][13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. merienda
3. ^ 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. merienda
4. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
6. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4291
9. ^ 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. 1, 768
10. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 459
11. ^ 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. merienda
12. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 552
13. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 697
14. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. merienda
15. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. merienda
16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 379
17. ^ 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. merienda