ombligo

Forms

ombligo m (plural ombligos)^[1] Old Spanish texts also spell it onbligo.^[2][3] García de Diego records embligo in Leonese and popular Castilian, and embeligo and embolligo in western Asturian.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin umbilīcus (“navel; centre”).^[5][6][1] The Appendix Probi already censures a popular Latin form imbilicus, and the REW traces some Romance forms with ⟨e-⟩ or ⟨i-⟩ to it.^[4][7]

The same Latin word is Portuguese umbigo, Galician embigo, Asturian embeligru, Aragonese melico, Catalan melic, Italian ombelico and Romanian buric.^[4][7][8] French nombril and Catalan llombrígol continue instead a diminutive Vulgar Latin *umbilīculus, with an article or a consonant fused onto the front of the word.^[9][10]

De Vaan reconstructs a Proto-Italic noun with an l-suffix, which was made thematic and then extended with the suffix -īcus.^[11] He traces it to a Proto-Indo-European word for the navel, also the source of Ancient Greek ὀμφαλός (omphalós, “navel; boss”) and Old High German nabalo (“navel”);^[11][1] Wiktionary gives the root form as Proto-Indo-European *h₃nóbʰōl.^[11][1] Bénaben and Vox take the Latin noun as a derivative of umbō (“boss of a shield”), which de Vaan lists as a related word.^[12][13][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest hit is Abraham of Toledo's Moamín (1250, in a copy of the later 13th century), a treatise on hunting birds: úntenles los ombligos con fiel de buey “let them rub their navels with ox gall”.^[3] The Judizios de las estrellas (1254–1260), the first text in a contemporary copy, lists a birthmark en el ombligo among the signs it reads.^[3][14] The DTME also dates the word from 1254.^[15]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's General Estoria (1272–1275) already uses the word for the centre of something: it reports that some wise men called the Nile the ombligo of the world.^[14][3] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1737) put that sense first, then the umbilical cord, the knot left on the belly when the cord is cut and tied, and in heraldry a point of the shield.^[16] The 1884 edition of the Academy's dictionary first gave the etymology, “Del lat. umbilicus”; the 1899 edition defined the navel as a round, wrinkled scar.^[17][18]

Plant and shell names grew from the shape: ombligo de Venus is a crassulaceous plant with round, navel-like leaves common on roofs and walls, and the Academy's dictionaries of the 19th century also gave the name to the operculum of a sea snail.^[19][6][20] Colloquial phrases include arrugársele or encogérsele el ombligo a alguien “to lose one's nerve”, recorded for Andalusia by Alcalá Venceslada, and el ombligo del mundo, said scornfully of whatever claims to be the most important thing.^[20][21][6] In Nicaragua, Colombia and Chile con el ombligo parado means “stuffed with food and drink”.^[22]

Timeline

• 1250 – Abraham of Toledo's Moamín (in a later 13th-century copy) has the plural ombligos.^[3]
• 1251 (in a copy of about 1400) – the Calila e Dimna spells it onbligo, describing the unborn child tied by its navel to its mother's.^[3]
• 1254–1260 – the Judizios de las estrellas use ombligo in a text copied in its own time.^[3][14]
• 1272–1275 – the General Estoria calls the Nile the ombligo of the world.^[14]
• 1335 – the first record given by Corominas's Breve diccionario.^[5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses ombligo del animal with Latin umbilicus.^[23]
• 1548 – the first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[24]
• 1737 – Autoridades defines the word and lists its anatomical and heraldic senses; the derivatives ombliguero and umbilical are first recorded the same year.^[16][5]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology for the first time.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. The navel, the round scar left in the middle of the belly after the umbilical cord (cordón umbilical) falls off: Tiene un tatuaje pequeño junto al ombligo.^[6][1]
2. The umbilical cord.^[6][20]
3. The centre or middle of anything: Para ellos la plaza era el ombligo del pueblo.^[6][20]

Word family

• ombliguero

Related words

• umbilical
• Latin umbilīcus
• Portuguese umbigo

Usage notes

El ombligo del mundo is used scornfully of a person or place that thinks itself the centre of everything.^[6] The botanical ombligo de Venus (Umbilicus rupestris and related species) is a plant with fleshy round leaves.^[6][20]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. ombligo
3. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. ombligo
4. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6957
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ombligo
6. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. ombligo
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. melic
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 5, 245
11. ^ a b c d de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses
13. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial
14. ^ 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. ombligo
15. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. ombligo
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 37
17. ^ 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. 759
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 713
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 615
20. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ombligo
21. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 437
22. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. ombligo
23. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. ombligo
24. ^ 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. ombligo