mujer

Forms

mujer f (plural mujeres)^[1] Old Spanish forms include mugier (the usual medieval form, in the Cid), muger, muller (Aragonese), mogier, moyer, moger and mubgier.^[2] The spelling muger was still used in Autoridades in 1734; the Academy's dictionary of 1843 spells mujer.^[3][4] Leonese and Asturian have muyer, and Galician and Aragonese muller.^[5][6]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish mugier, inherited from Latin mulier (“woman; wife”).^[2][7][8][1] In Vulgar Latin the word was stressed on the second ⟨e⟩, muliére, unlike the classical stress on the first syllable.^[2] The varying outcomes of the group /lj/ in the different regions explain the different forms of the word.^[9]

The same Latin word is Portuguese mulher, Galician muller, Asturian muyer, Aragonese muller, Catalan muller, Occitan molhèr, Old French moillier, Italian moglie and Romanian muiere.^[10][5][1] Outside Castilian, Portuguese and Romanian it has kept only the sense “wife”, while “woman” passed to descendants of femina or domina.^[2]

The origin of the Latin word is uncertain.^[11] The adjective muliebris shows an old s-stem, nominative *muliēs.^[11] The older explanation as a comparative of mollis (“soft”) runs into phonetic difficulties, and so does Klingenschmitt's comparative of the stem of melior (“better”), “the better one, chief wife”; de Vaan leaves open a different origin.^[11] Wiktionary also mentions a link with mulgeo (“to milk”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds muller in an Aragonese document of 1025 and mugier in a charter of 1113, the date the BDELC gives;^[12] muger follows in 1194.^[2][7] The CDH's earlier hits are Latin mulier in charters and fueros.^[13] The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has the plural for the women of Burgos who come out to see the Cid ride in: Exiénlo ver mugieres e varones.^[13]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used the word for any woman, for a grown woman and for a wife, three senses that Alfonso X's prose already shows.^[12] Covarrubias in 1611 repeated Varro's derivation from mollitia “softness”.^[14] Autoridades (1734) defined it as a rational creature of the female sex and, regularly, the wife in relation to her husband, and recorded mujer de su casa for a careful housewife.^[3] The dictionaries of the 19th century list many phrases for a prostitute (mujer del partido, mujer pública, mujer de mala vida) and proverbs about women.^[4][15] The 1884 edition gave the etymology and the sense “woman who has reached puberty”.^[16]

Spoken Spanish uses ¡mujer! as an exclamation addressed to a girl or woman.^[17] Countries of the Americas have many phrases of their own, such as mujer de ñeque “brave, hard-working woman” in Central America and Bolivia.^[18]

Timeline

• 1113 – mugier in a charter.^[2][7]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses mugieres.^[13][2]
• 1194 – the spelling muger in a charter.^[2]
• 1490 – the derivatives mujeriego and mujeril appear in Alfonso de Palencia.^[2][7]
• 1515 – the first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives mulier from mollitia.^[14]
• 1734 – Autoridades has the senses “woman” and “wife”.^[3]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology and records mujerío.^[16][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. woman: a person of the female sex.^[8][1]
2. An adult woman, as opposed to a girl: Ya es toda una mujer.^[8][17]
3. A woman with the qualities thought of as typically feminine.^[8]
4. wife, or a man's usual female partner: Vino a la cena con su mujer.^[8][1]

Word family

• mujercilla
• mujeriego
• mujeril
• mujerío
• mujerona
• amujerado
• amujeramiento
• mujercita
• mujerzuela
• mujeruca

Related words

• Latin mulier
• Portuguese mulher
• Catalan muller

Usage notes

Set phrases include mujer de su casa “good housewife”, mujer fatal “femme fatale” and mujer de la calle “streetwalker”.^[8][17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 185
3. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 626
4. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 489
5. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4476
6. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. muyer
7. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mujer
8. ^ a b c d e f 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. mujer
9. ^ Le Men Loyer, Janick (2002–2012), Léxico del leonés actual, 4 vols., León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro; electronic version, Universidad de León, p. s.v. mujer
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ 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. mujer
13. ^ 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. mujer
14. ^ 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. 1153
15. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 738
16. ^ 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. 725
17. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mujer
18. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. mujer
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. muher