mosquito

Forms

mosquito m (plural mosquitos)^[1]

Etymology

As the Academy's dictionary explains it, it is formed from Spanish mosco + -ito as a diminutive, the noun mosco meaning “mosquito” and being itself formed from mosca (“fly”).^[2][3][4] Wiktionary forms it directly on the noun for “fly” with the same suffix, and it was already mosquito in Old Spanish.^[1]

Corominas sees it the other way round: the word is a derivative of the noun for “fly” shared with Portuguese mosquito and Catalan mosquit, and its ending is not the diminutive suffix, foreign to those languages, but an imitation of the ending of cabrito.^[5] The shorter noun would then be a back-formation, much used in Mexico, Chile and other American countries and popular in southern Spain.^[5] Wiktionary compares Italian moschetto and Sicilian muschitta (“midge”), and gives mosquete (“musket”) as a doublet.^[1]

The noun for “fly” is inherited from Latin musca (“fly”).^[6] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *muskā and Proto-Indo-European *mu-s-, with cognates such as Ancient Greek μυῖα (muîa, “fly”) and Old English mycg, and suggests an imitation of the humming of flies and mosquitoes.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Alfonso X's Lapidario (c. 1250, in a manuscript of the mid-13th century), where a stone protects del danno de los mosquitos & de todas maneras de moscas que sean pozonadas o mordedores “from the harm of mosquitoes and all kinds of flies that are poisonous or biting”.^[8][9] The DCECH dates it about 1400, in the Glosario de Toledo.^[5]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's General Estoria already equates the insects with Latin culices, and the word kept the sense of a small biting fly.^[8][9] In 1611 Covarrubias described it as a small fly that can trouble a man, and quoted the saying tragarse un elefante y soplar el mosquito, said of scrupulous hypocrites.^[10] The Autoridades distinguished long-legged zancudos or de trompetilla, named for their whining hum, from smaller kinds and those that breed in wine, and recorded the jocular sense “someone who frequents the tavern”.^[11] Terreros glossed this second sense as “wine-drinker”.^[12]

The Spanish word was taken into other European languages through reports from the Americas: Friederici collects moxquitos in Cabeza de Vaca (1542) and many spellings in the chroniclers.^[13] French has moustique (1654, earlier mousquite 1611) and English mosquito from Spanish.^[5][14][15] In Puerto Rico and Uruguay a mosquito is also a sugar-cane tractor.^[16][17]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – first record, in Alfonso X's Lapidario.^[8][9]
• c. 1275 – the General Estoria equates the mosquitos with Latin culices.^[8]
• c. 1400 – the Glosario de Toledo, the DCECH's first record.^[5][6]
• 1513 – Nebrija gives Latin culex for a kind of mosquito.^[18]
• 1532 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico: no hay falta de mosquitos.^[19]
• 1538 – English mosquito is first recorded, according to Corominas.^[5]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines the mosquito as a small fly and quotes a proverb.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology, from mosco.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. A mosquito: a small two-winged insect with long thin legs whose wings make a high-pitched hum, the female of which sucks the blood of people and animals: Anoche no dormí por culpa de un mosquito.^[2][1]
2. (entomology) Any insect of the suborder Nematocera; also a gnat.^[2][1]
3. The larva of the locust (langosta).^[2][4]
4. (colloquial, rare) A man who often goes to the tavern (taberna).^[2]
5. (Puerto Rico, Uruguay) In the sugar industry, a tractor with large wheels and a small cab used to haul cane carts.^[16]

Word family

• mosquitero

Related words

• jején
• mosca
• mosco
• mosquete
• Latin musca
• English mosquito

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. mosquito
3. ^ 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. mosco
4. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mosquito
5. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 159
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mosca
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ 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. mosquito
9. ^ a b c 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. mosquito
10. ^ 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. 1149
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. mosquito
12. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 2, 626
13. ^ Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter, p. 431
14. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 475
15. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
16. ^ 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. mosquito
17. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. mosquito
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 383
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. mosquito
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 721