mondo

Forms

mondo (feminine monda, masculine plural mondos, feminine plural mondas)^[1] Alfonso X's prose also spells the adjective mundo, as in sancto & mundo “holy and pure”.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mundus (“clean, neat, elegant”).^[3][4][1][5] The REW lists the same adjective in Italian mondo, Sardinian mundu, Old French mont, Old Occitan mon and Portuguese mondo.^[6] The verb mondar “to clean, peel” is the Latin derivative mundō (“to clean, purify”), recorded in Spanish from the late 10th century.^[3]

De Vaan suggests a derivation from Proto-Indo-European *mewd- (“to rejoice”), but finds the meanings hard to reconcile.^[7][1] He keeps it apart from the Latin noun for “world”, whose origin is unknown,^[7] and Spanish mundo continues that noun as a semi-learned word.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Glosas Silenses, of the second half of the 10th century, record the feminine plural mondas.^[9][3] In the Vida de santa María Egipciaca (c. 1215) the penitent saint de sus pecados sse sintió monda “felt herself clean of her sins”.^[10][9]

Semantic evolution

From “clean” the word came to mean “bare, stripped of anything added”: Cervantes's Teresa Panza calls hers nombre mondo y escueto “a plain, bare name”, without any don or doña, and Espinel speaks of a meal of huessos mondos “bare bones”.^[11] The intensive phrase mondo y lirondo “clean, with nothing added” is in the Academy's dictionary from 1817.^[12] In Mexico it appears in 1816 as mondo y birondo.^[13] Moliner and Vox add the colloquial senses “shorn bald” and “cleaned out of money”.^[14][15]

Timeline

• c. 950–1000 – the Glosas Silenses record mondas.^[9][3]
• c. 1215 – the Vida de santa María Egipciaca uses monda “cleansed (of sin)”.^[10]
• 1256 – Alfonso X's Picatrix uses the spelling mundo for “pure”.^[2]
• 1608 – the first record in the Americas, in Lima: me dexó mondo y desnudo “he left me stripped and naked”.^[13]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as clean and free of anything superfluous.^[11]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary records mondo y lirondo.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology from Latin mundus.^[16]

Meanings

Adjective

1. clean and free of anything added or superfluous; bare: Solo cobra el sueldo mondo.^[4][14]
2. (colloquial) Stripped of hair, bald; stripped of money, broke.^[14][15]

Word family

• mondar
• remondar
• morondo
• mondadientes

Related words

• mundo
• inmundo
• inmundicia
• Latin mundus
• Italian mondo

Usage notes

Mondo y lirondo is a colloquial phrase meaning “clean, with nothing added”.^[4] Mondo is also an archaic form of the noun mundo “world”.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. mondo
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mondo
4. ^ a b c 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. mondo
5. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. mondo
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5748
7. ^ 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
8. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 464
9. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. mondo
10. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. 303
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 581
13. ^ 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. mondo
14. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mondo
15. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. mondo
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 714