mesteño

Forms

mesteño (feminine mesteña, masculine plural mesteños, feminine plural mesteñas)^[1] Old Spanish also had mestengo (Nebrija) and, Corominas assumes, *mestenco, which became mostrenco.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is formed from Spanish mesta + -eño, and first meant “belonging to the Mesta”.^[2][1][4] The Mesta's herd was made up of strays and animals of no known owner, which fell to the Concejo de la Mesta; so the adjective came to mean an animal without an owner.^[2][5]

Beside it Old Spanish had mestengo, with another suffix, and Corominas assumes a form *mestenco which, under the influence of mostrar (“to show”), became mostrenco: whoever found an ownerless animal had to have it shown by the town crier.^[2][5] A cuaderno of the Mesta quoted by Cabrera calls lost livestock by both names, and Nebrija equated the two.^[2][3] Corominas notes that the change to ⟨mostr-⟩ was complete only in the form with ⟨-enco⟩, while the form in ⟨-eño⟩ kept its shape.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas and Segura Munguía date mesteño to 1533, in documents from Granada quoted in Klein's study of the Mesta, where stockmen swear that they hide no ganado mestenno “stray livestock” in their flocks.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

Autoridades defines the word as belonging to the Mesta, with a quotation from the Recopilación on persons who take for themselves los ganados mestéños y mostrencos.^[7] The Academy's 1817 edition adds the sense of mostrenco, ownerless.^[8] In New Spain the word was used of half-wild horses: a 1777 text from Mexico tells of a band of caballada mesteña that carried off seventy horses, and in 1793 the herds of yeguas y caballos mesteños of Texas were taken as a proof of its fertility.^[9] Salvá (1846) records the Mexican sense “wild and without an owner”, of horses, mules and cattle.^[10] In New Mexico it still means “stray” and “wild”.^[11][2]

From mesteño or mestengo, Corominas derives the American English word mustang (1808), the wild horse of Texas, California and Mexico.^[2] Friederici takes mustang as an Anglo-American corruption of mestenco, mostrenco and mesteño.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1495 – Nebrija has the variant mestengo, glossed as mostrenco.^[2][3]
• 1533 – mesteño in documents from Granada.^[2][6]
• 1718 – first record in the Americas, yeguas mestiñas in Nueva Vizcaya (Mexico).^[9]
• 1762 – recorded in New Mexico for “wild, without an owner”.^[2][12]
• 1808 – first record of the English mustang.^[2]
• 1846 – Salvá records the Mexican sense of ownerless, unbroken livestock.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of or relating to the Mesta.^[13][14]
2. Of an animal, especially a horse or cattle: without an owner, stray; untamed, wild.^[13][1]

Noun

1. A stray animal; of horses, a mustang.^[1][11]

Related words

• mostrenco
• mixto
• English mustang

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 165
3. ^ a b c Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 380
4. ^ Le Men Loyer, Janick (2002–2012), Léxico del leonés actual, 4 vols., León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro; electronic version, Universidad de León, p. s.v. mesteño
5. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mostrenco
6. ^ a b Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 468
7. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 556
8. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 571
9. ^ a b 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. mesteño
10. ^ a b Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 714
11. ^ a b Cobos, Rubén (1983), A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, p. 131
12. ^ a b Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter, p. 439
13. ^ a b 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. mesteño
14. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. mesteño