miembro

Forms

miembro m (plural miembros, feminine miembro or (proscribed) miembra, feminine plural miembros or (proscribed) miembras)^[1] Old Spanish spelt it miembro, mienbro, menbro and myenbro.^[2] Old Castilian also had nembro and niembro, and Old Leonese membrio.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin membrum (“part of the body, limb”).^[4][5][1] The Breve diccionario dates it to 1219; the corpus has it in a Castilian text of the Cortes de León dated 1208.^[4][6]

The same Latin word is Portuguese membro, Galician membro, Asturian miembru, Catalan membre, French membre and Italian membro.^[7][3][1] The French word is described as a borrowing from Latin, and Nascentes calls the Portuguese word learned.^[8][1]

The Latin word goes back to *memsro- and Proto-Indo-European *mēms-ro- (“body part, meaty part”).^[9] It is related to the words for meat: μηρός (mērós, “thigh”), mėsà (“meat”) and mír (“portion”).^[9][10] Wiktionary gives *memzrom and *mḗms (“flesh”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record in the corpus is a Castilian text of the Cortes de León of 1208, where it is used of the Church as a body: „ansi en la cabeza, como en los miembros” “both in the head and in the members”.^[6] In the Fuero de Zorita (1218–c. 1250) it is a limb: a man is to „sea espedaçado por mienbros” “be torn limb from limb”.^[6]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's Lapidario has the limb, the male member (los miembros … con que fazen linaje) and a part of a whole.^[11] Nebrija has several Latin words for the male member, and Covarrubias notes that anything divided into parts has miembros.^[12][13] Autoridades gives the physicians' miembros principales (heart, brain, liver and testicles), the members of a moral body such as a city or religious order, and the parts of an architectural order.^[14]

The sense “member of a group” was criticised by Capmany in the Cortes of 1810, when it was used of deputies;^[15] Baralt defended it in 1855 as good Spanish.^[15] An early American record (Tierra Firme, 1518) already speaks of a governor as the head from which the members proceed.^[16] In mathematics it is each side of an equation or inequality.^[5]

Timeline

• 1208 – a Castilian text of the Cortes de León uses miembros for the members of the Church.^[6]
• 1219 – first record in the Breve diccionario.^[4]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario has the limb and the male organ.^[11]
• 1518 – first record in the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias.^[13]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades gives the medical, moral and architectural senses.^[14]
• 1810 – Capmany objects to miembros for deputies of the Cortes.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A limb: each of the parts of a person or animal joined to the trunk: Le dolían todos los miembros.^[5][1]
2. The penis; also miembro viril.^[5][1]
3. A part of a whole, joined to it.^[5]
4. A part or piece separated from a thing.^[5]
5. (architecture) Each of the main parts of an architectural order or of a building.^[5]
6. (mathematics) Each of the two expressions of an equation or inequality.^[5]
7. A member: a person who belongs to a group, community or body: Es miembro del club desde hace años.^[5][1]

Word family

• membrudo
• desmembrar

Related words

• bimembre
• unimembre
• membrana
• Latin membrum

Usage notes

Used of a woman, miembro is masculine (el miembro) or, since the Academy's 2001 dictionary, also feminine (la miembro).^[17] The feminine miembra is proscribed.^[1] Miembro podrido is a person cut off from a community, or unworthy of it, for their faults.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. miembro
3. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. miembro
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. miembro
6. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. miembro
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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. miembro
12. ^ 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. miembro
13. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1135
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 565
15. ^ a b c Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado
16. ^ 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. miembro
17. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es