montaña

Forms

montaña f (plural montañas)^[1] Old Spanish wrote montanna, montaña and, in eastern texts, montayña or muntanna; a charter of Borja of 1144–1151 has montanna.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *montanea (“mountainous country”), Old Spanish montanna.^[3][4][5] The Latin form is the neuter plural of an adjective *montaneus, which also underlies the montaniosus of the Roman land surveyors; it is built on mons (“mountain”).^[3][5] Classical Latin had the adjective montānus (“of the mountains”).^[6][7] Wiktionary describes the medieval Medieval Latin montānia, recorded in the 8th-century Reichenau glosses, as a collective formed like campānia (“countryside”) from campus.^[1]

The word survives in all the western Romance languages: Portuguese montanha, Galician montaña, Catalan muntanya, Occitan montanha, French montagne and Italian montagna.^[3][8]

mons goes back to Proto-Indo-European *mon-ti- (“protrusion, height”).^[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has the Cid camp outside Burgos „commo si fuesse en montaña” “as if he were in the wilds”.^[10] Menéndez Pidal glosses the word in the poem as “land covered with woods or scrub”: after crossing the Sierra de Miedes the Cid camps in the middle of a montaña.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The sense “land covered with scrub or tall woods” runs through the Cid, the Primera crónica general, Juan Ruiz and Nebrija (nemus) to texts of the 16th century, and then died out in Spain; it had been carried to the Americas.^[3][12] Friederici notes that in the chronicles of the conquest and in the Spanish colonies it usually means “virgin forest”, not “mountains”.^[13] In Mexico, Central America, Ecuador, Peru and northwestern Argentina it still names extensive wild woodland, and in Peru la montaña is the Amazonian region east of the Andes.^[14]

The Diccionario de Autoridades treated it as the same as monte and recorded la Montaña, the mountain country of Burgos, and the slang montaña de pinos “brothel”.^[15] Today it also means a great heap of something and, colloquially, a problem that is very hard to solve.^[5] The montaña rusa “roller coaster” is a translation of French montagnes russes.^[6] In the Canary Islands a montaña is a rounded volcanic cone.^[16] The name of the American state Montana is a Latinised form of the Spanish word.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses it for wild, wooded land (in a 14th-century copy).^[10][11]
• 1144–1151 – a charter of Borja has montanna.^[2]
• c. 1194–1211 – the Liber regum speaks of las montannas d'Asturias.^[10]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses it for a mountain from which a river flows.^[18]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija translates it montes and nemus.^[12]
• 1532 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico City: faldas de la montaña.^[19]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records la Montaña of Burgos.^[15]
• 1864 – the name Montana is proposed for a United States territory.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. A mountain: a great natural elevation of the land: Desde el valle se veía la montaña nevada.^[5][1]
2. A territory full of mountains.^[5]
3. A great heap of something: una montaña de ropa sin planchar.^[5][1]
4. (colloquial) A problem that is very hard to solve.^[5]
5. (Costa Rica, Honduras, Peru) Rainforest, dense woodland.^[5][14]
6. (obsolete; still used in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Honduras and Venezuela) Woodland or scrub.^[5]

Word family

• montañero
• montañés
• montañoso
• montañismo
• montañista
• pasamontañas

Related words

• monte
• montaraz
• Latin mons
• Portuguese montanha

Usage notes

Montaña rusa is a roller coaster.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. montaña
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 131
4. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. monte
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. montaña
6. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 471
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. montaña
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. *montanea
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. mons
10. ^ 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. montaña
11. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 355
12. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 382
13. ^ Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter, p. 426
14. ^ 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. montaña
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 600
16. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. montaña
17. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
18. ^ 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. montaña
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. montaña