mijo

Forms

mijo m (plural mijos)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote miio and milio, and Navarrese texts have millo.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin milium (“millet”).^[4][5][1] The same Latin word is Portuguese milho, Galician millo, Catalan mill, Old Occitan melh, French mil, Italian miglio, Romanian mei and Mozarabic micho.^[6][7][8] Coromines notes that the Romance languages point to a form with a long /iː/, although the Latin vowel was short.^[9][10] The REW explains the vowel by the influence of mīlle (“thousand”), because of the great number of grains.^[7] millo is a doublet.^[1]

De Vaan compares μελίνη (melínē, “millet”) and málnos (“a kind of millet”), perhaps all derived from *melh₂- (“to grind”), “the grain to be ground”.^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Breve diccionario dates the word to 1219.^[4] The oldest hit in the CDH is the Moamín (1250, in a late 13th-century copy), a book on hunting birds, which compares small swellings to grains of millet: unos granos como de mijo.^[3] In Alfonso X's Picatrix (1256) millet is one of seven seeds used in a rite.^[12]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages mijo named a grain sown and stored with wheat and barley, as in Alfonso X's Estoria de España.^[3] Autoridades describes it as food mostly for birds, sometimes made into a poor bread, and adds that in Galicia and elsewhere the name was given to maize.^[13] The DLE still records the sense “maize” in some regions.^[5][14] The 1899 edition of the Academy's dictionary describes the plant as a grass native to India.^[15]

Timeline

• 1219 – first record.^[4]
• 1250 – the Moamín compares swellings to grains of millet.^[3]
• 1256 – Alfonso X's Picatrix lists it among seven seeds.^[12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin milium and Greek cenchris.^[16]
• 1560 – first record from the Americas, in Yucatán.^[17]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades records the regional sense “maize”.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology milium.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. millet, a grass native to India with flat pointed leaves and flowers in drooping panicles.^[5][1]
2. The small, round, shiny yellowish-white seed of this plant.^[5]
3. (regional) Maize (maíz).^[5][14]

Related words

• millo
• Latin milium
• Portuguese milho
• Catalan mill

Usage notes

A separate mijo, mija is a contraction of mi hijo, mi hija “my son, my daughter”.^[19][20] In Chile and many other American countries it is an affectionate form of address to one's children, to a friend or to a partner.^[20][21] Mijo ceburro is a name of bread wheat.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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. mijo
3. ^ 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. mijo
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mijo
5. ^ a b c d e f 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. mijo
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. milium
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. milium
8. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 461
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. 5, 686
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2230
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ 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. mijo
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 568
14. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mijo
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 659
16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 380
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. mijo
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 703
19. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. mijo
20. ^ 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. mijo
21. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. mijo