mirlo

Forms

mirlo m (plural mirlos)^[1] Old Spanish had the feminine mierla, the usual form until the 16th century, and mierlo;^[1] mirlo is found from the 16th century.^[2][3][1] Dialect forms include mielro and nierbo in Salamanca, merbo and nerbo in Asturias and milro in popular Castilian.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish mierlo, inherited from Latin merulus (“blackbird”), the later masculine form of merula.^[5][1][6][7] The older Spanish feminine mierla continues the Latin feminine itself.^[2][4] García de Diego explains the final -o of the modern form by the influence of tordo “thrush”.^[4]

The same Latin word is Portuguese melro, Galician melro, Catalan merla, Occitan merla, French merle, Italian merlo, Italian merla, Sardinian meurra and Romanian mierlă.^[8][4] The DHLF notes that it was the Latin feminine that passed into most Romance languages, so that the French word was feminine in Old French.^[9] Portuguese has merlo in the 13th century, from the masculine.^[10]

De Vaan traces the Latin word to Proto-Italic *mesVlā-, with an uncertain vowel, and compares Welsh mwyalch, Old High German amsla and Old English ōsle “blackbird”; following Schrijver, he notes that the British, Latin and Germanic forms point to a loan from a non-Indo-European language of Europe.^[11] Wiktionary reconstructs *meselā, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ems- (“black”), itself thought to be a substrate word of northwestern Europe.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest hit, of 1399, is a place name, La Mierla, a hamlet of Beleña.^[3] The bird appears about 1400–1421 in Clemente Sánchez de Vercial's Libro de los exemplos, in a story of Saint Benedict: una ave que llamavan mierla bolava e rrebolava delante su cara “a bird they called a blackbird flew back and forth before his face”.^[3] DEMel cites earlier records, from Juan Manuel's works, only from a secondary source.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Mierla remained the usual form through the 16th century: Nebrija gives it with Latin merulus and merula in 1495.^[3] The masculine mirlo appears in Hernán Núñez's collection of proverbs (c. 1549), Al mirlo y al tordo, a lo que no te agrada hazte sordo, which Correas gives in 1627 as Al mierlo, i al tordo.^[3]

In 1634 Lope de Vega used mirlo for the affected, solemn look of a face in his Gatomaquia.^[3] The Diccionario de Autoridades, whose volume of 1734 is Corominas's first record of mirlo, gave this as its first sense, quoting the same poem, and sent the reader to merla for the bird.^[2][13] The Academy's dictionary of 1817 describes the bird under mirlo, as black with a yellow bill in the male and able to imitate sounds and even the human voice.^[14] In 1884 it added soltar el mirlo “to start talking”, and Andalusian speech has the opposite amarrar el mirlo “to keep quiet”, with mirlo meaning the tongue.^[15][16]

A mirlo blanco “white blackbird” is a person of extraordinary rarity; in Argentina Garzón recorded it in 1910 as praise for someone of exceptional merit.^[5][17] In Argentina and Uruguay the name is also given to a different bird, a blue-black seed-eater.^[18]

Timeline

• 1399 – the place name La Mierla in a deed of partition.^[3]
• c. 1400–1421 – mierla in Sánchez de Vercial's Libro de los exemplos.^[3]
• 1495 – Nebrija's Vocabulario has mierla, Latin merulus, merula.^[3]
• c. 1549 – the masculine mirlo in Hernán Núñez's proverbs.^[3]
• 1634 – Lope de Vega uses mirlo for an affected, solemn look.^[3]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records mirlo.^[2][13]
• 1817 – the Academy describes the bird under mirlo.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the Latin merula and merulus as the etymon and adds soltar el mirlo.^[15]
• 1919 – first record from the Americas, in Bolivia.^[19]

Meanings

Noun

1. The common blackbird (Turdus merula), a songbird about 25 cm long that eats fruit, seeds and insects; the male is all black with a yellow bill, the female dark brown, and it can learn to mimic sounds: Al amanecer cantaba un mirlo en el tejado.^[5][20]
2. (colloquial) An affected, solemn gravity in a person's face.^[5][20]
3. (Argentina, Uruguay) A different bird about 20 cm long, the male blue-black and the female greyish, that feeds on seeds.^[18]

Related words

• mirla
• merla
• Latin merula
• Portuguese melro

Usage notes

Mirlo blanco is a person of extraordinary rarity or merit, and soltar el mirlo (colloquial) means “to start chatting”.^[5] Spanish also has the feminine mirla, and merla and miruello are given as synonyms.^[20]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mirlo
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. mirlo
4. ^ a b c d García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. merula
5. ^ a b c d e 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. mirlo
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. mirlo
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. mirlo
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. merula
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. merle
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2188
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. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. mirlo
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 576
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 576
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 707
16. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 404
17. ^ Garzón, Tobías (1910), Diccionario argentino, Barcelona: Imprenta Elzeviriana de Borrás y Mestres, p. 312
18. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. mirlo
19. ^ 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. mirlo
20. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mirlo