mudo

Forms

mudo (feminine muda, masculine plural mudos, feminine plural mudas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish mudo, inherited from Latin mūtus (“dumb, silent”).^[2][3][4][1] The Latin /t/ between vowels was voiced to /d/.^[1][5] Corominas notes that the word has been in general use in every period and is common to all the Romance languages.^[2]

The same Latin word is Portuguese mudo, Galician mudo, Asturian mudu, Catalan mut, Occitan mut, Italian muto and Romanian mut.^[6][7][1] French muet is a derivative of Old French mu, the old French outcome of the Latin word.^[8][1]

De Vaan explains the Latin adjective as describing one who can say nothing but mū, from Proto-Indo-European *mū̆-to-, and compares Sanskrit मूक (mū́ka, “dumb”) and Ancient Greek μυνδός (mundós, “dumb”).^[9][1] The OLD likewise calls it onomatopoeic and first records it of animals, as in Naevius's “dumb quadrupeds”.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140), as the nickname of one of the Cid's knights: Pero Mudo, varón que tanto callas “Pero the Mute, you who keep so silent” (lines 3302, 3310).^[11][3][12] DEMel's first record in a document is the Fuero de Madrid (1158–1202).^[12] In Alfonso X's laws (1256–1300) it has the full sense “unable to speak”, beside sordos “deaf”.^[13]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's Judizios (1254) already used mudos as a term of astrology for the signs Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces.^[13] In the Americas Fernández de Oviedo (1549) wrote of little dogs that were mudos because they could not bark.^[14]

The Diccionario de Autoridades (1734) gave the person unable to speak, “very quiet” by extension, the astrological signs and the grammatical sense of a consonant letter.^[15] The DLE now adds the phonetic sense “plosive” and the letter that is written but not pronounced, such as the h of hombre.^[4] In Ecuador, Guatemala and north-west Argentina mudo means “stupid”; in El Salvador it is a thief's hidden pistol.^[16][4]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid calls one of its knights Pero Mudo.^[11][3]
• 1158–1202 – mudo in the Fuero de Madrid.^[12]
• 1254 – Alfonso X's Judizios calls Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces the mudos signs.^[13]
• 1256–1300 – Alfonso X's laws use it for people unable to speak.^[13]
• 1495 – first record of enmudecer “to fall silent”.^[3]
• 1513 – Nebrija gives Latin mutus as its equivalent.^[17]
• 1548 – first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[14]
• 17th century – first record of mudez “muteness”.^[3]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines the person, the astrological signs and the mute letter.^[15]
• c. 1880 – first record of mutismo “mutism”.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. mute, dumb: unable to speak; also used as a noun.^[4][1]
2. Very quiet or silent (callado), for a long time or for a moment: Se quedó mudo al ver la carta.^[4][1]
3. Without sound or words: cine mudo “silent film”.^[18][1]
4. (astrology) Of the signs Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces.^[4][1]
5. (phonetics, traditional) plosive.^[4][1]
6. (linguistics) Of a letter: not pronounced, like the h in Spanish.^[4][1]
7. (Ecuador) Stupid (tonto); also used as a noun.^[4][16]

Word family

• mudez
• enmudecer
• mudamente
• sordomudo
• tartamudo

Related words

• mutismo
• Latin mūtus
• Portuguese mudo
• Catalan mut

Usage notes

A la muda means “silently”, and something extraordinary is said to hacer hablar a los mudos “make the mute speak”.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 179
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mudo
4. ^ 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. mudo
5. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. mudo
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. mutus
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5798
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. muet
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. s.v. mudo
12. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. mudo
13. ^ a b c d 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. mudo
14. ^ 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. mudo
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 624
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. mudo
17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 383
18. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. mudo