mirra

Forms

mirra f (uncountable)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote mira, as in the Auto de los Reyes Magos, where Menéndez Pidal finds the stress uncertain.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin myrrha, which is from Ancient Greek μύρρα (múrrha, “myrrh”).^[4][5][1] Latin also wrote the word murra.^[6][7] The same word is Catalan mirra, Portuguese mirra, Italian mirra and French myrrhe, and English myrrh is a cognate.^[7][8][9][1]

The Greek word is a loan from Semitic: Beekes compares Biblical Hebrew מֹר (mōr) and Arabic مر (murr) “myrrh”.^[10][11] Corriente, Pereira and Vicente trace it to Akkadian murru, probably through a Canaanite language.^[7] The DHLF connects it with a Semitic root ⟨mrr⟩ “to be bitter”.^[9] In Greek it was replaced by the unrelated σμύρνα (smúrna).^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word first appears in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy), in a prayer that recalls the three kings of Arabia: oro e tus e mirra te ofrecieron “gold and incense and myrrh they offered you”.^[12][4] The Auto de los Reyes Magos explains the gift: si fure omne mortal, la mira tomará “if he is a mortal man, he will take the myrrh”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages myrrh was above all the gift of the Magi and a sign of the tomb, an idea Menéndez Pidal traces to Sedulius;^[3][13] Berceo says it was given por condir la mortal carnadura “to embalm the mortal flesh”.^[3][13] Alfonso X's Lapidario names it with aloes, camphor and balsam among the things that keep a body from decay, and the General estoria speaks of mirra escollecha, the choicest myrrh, as the first spice of the holy oil.^[14] Covarrubias describes the small Arabian tree that sheds it as a tear, and the myth of Myrrha, the daughter of the king of Cyprus turned into that tree.^[15] The Academy's 1817 edition notes its use in pharmacy.^[16] From 1884 it describes it as a gum resin of an Arabian tree.^[16][17][5]

From the use of myrrh to embalm the dead came, probably through Portuguese mirrado (“withered, dried up”), the Spanish esmirriado “thin, wasted”.^[18][8]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid (in a 14th-century copy) names the gift of the Magi.^[12][4]
• 1211 – the Fazienda de Ultramar, the earliest text with the word in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[19]
• c. 1230–1260 – the Libre dels tres reys d'Orient, the first record in a manuscript of its own time.^[12]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario lists it among preservatives of the body.^[14]
• 1516 – first record in the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias tells the myth of Myrrha.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology from Latin and Greek.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. myrrh: a bitter, aromatic, red and semi-transparent gum resin (gomorresina) in the form of tears, from a tree of Arabia and Ethiopia.^[5][1]
2. mirra líquida: a fragrant gummy liquid that flows from young myrrh trees, held by the ancients to be a precious balm (bálsamo).^[5][21]

Related words

• esmirriado
• Latin myrrha
• English myrrh

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. mirra
3. ^ a b c d Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 353
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mirra
5. ^ a b c d 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. mirra
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter
8. ^ a b 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, 704
9. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. myrrhe
10. ^ a b Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 466
12. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. mirra
13. ^ a b Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 500
14. ^ 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. mirra
15. ^ 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. 1138
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 576
17. ^ 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
18. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 479
19. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. mirra
20. ^ 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. mirra
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mirra