paja

Forms

paja f (plural pajas)^[1] Old Spanish texts spell it paia, paja and paya; the Aragonese form palla appears in a document of 1198.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish paja, inherited from Latin palea (“chaff; husk of grain”).^[3][4][5][1] In Latin the word meant the husk of cereal grains and broken, crushed straw; the sense “long straw”, which became general in the Romance languages, is found once in Sulpicius Severus.^[3] The shift is probably explained by the use of chaff as litter for animals, later replaced by whole dry stalks.^[6]

The same Latin word is Portuguese palha, Galician palla, Asturian paya, Catalan palla, Occitan palha, French paille, Italian paglia and Romanian paie.^[7][8] Castilian has /x/ where Galician, Asturian, Cantabrian, Aragonese and Catalan keep a palatal ⟨ll⟩, and parts of Asturias and Cantabria have ⟨y⟩.^[7]

The Latin noun goes back to *palejā.^[9] De Vaan connects it with words for chaff in Sanskrit, Baltic and Slavic, from a stem *pelH-u-, and suggests that all of them may be nouns formed from *pelh₁- (“to swing”) (the source of Ancient Greek πάλλω (pállō, “to swing, shake”)), chaff being what threshing shakes off the grain.^[9] Wiktionary and Gómez de Silva instead give a root *pel- (“flour, dust”).^[1][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to the earliest period of the language, with a charter of 1210 and Berceo.^[3][4] The Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy) uses it in the story of the Hebrews in Egypt, whose overseers would give them no straw for their bricks: non les diessen paia “they should not give them straw”.^[11] The Fuero de Zorita (1218–c. 1250) orders the ploughman to roof a house to keep the paia for the oxen.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X already used the word both for the dry stalks and for the useless part of anything, as opposed to what is worth keeping.^[12] Covarrubias in 1611 recorded proverbs built on its lightness and short life, such as a lumbre de pajas “like a straw fire”, for what lasts little, and no dormirse en las pajas “not to be careless”.^[13] Autoridades gave the figurative senses “anything light, of little substance” and “what is useless and discarded”.^[14]

The Academy's 1843 dictionary added paja de agua, a unit used when the water of fountains was shared out; the Canary Islands record it as early as 1556.^[15][16] Its 1899 edition added paja brava, a grass of the high Andes valued as pasture and fuel.^[17] The 2001 edition gave the sense “drinking straw”, which Malaret had noted for Puerto Rico.^[18][19]

In vulgar use paja means masturbation.^[5] Corominas reports Wagner's view that hacerse una paja does not come from palea at all but from the Caló verb pajalar “to touch obscenely”.^[3][5] In the Americas the word has many senses of its own: “lie” in Central America, Colombia and Venezuela, “excellent” in Peru, “effort” and “laziness” in Chile, and “tap” in El Salvador and Nicaragua.^[20]

The Spanish word for a clown, payaso, is not a native derivative: it came through French paillasse from Italian pagliaccio, properly a straw mattress.^[3]

Timeline

• 1198 – the Aragonese form palla appears in a document.^[2]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (in a 13th-century copy) has paia.^[11]
• 1210 – first record in a Castilian charter, according to Corominas.^[3][4]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario describes a stone that attracts bits of straw.^[12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin festuca and stipula as its equivalents.^[21]
• 1532 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico.^[22]
• 1556 – pajas de agua are allotted in the Canary Islands.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records proverbs with paja.^[13]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary adds paja de agua.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin palĕa for the first time.^[23]

Meanings

Noun

1. A straw: the stalk of wheat, barley, rye or another cereal once it has dried and been separated from the grain.^[5][1]
2. Straw collectively, whole or chopped: Dormían sobre un montón de paja.^[5][1]
3. A drinking straw.^[5][1]
4. A small thin bit of a plant or of something similar; a mote.^[5]
5. Something light and of little substance; padding in a speech or a piece of writing.^[5][24]
6. The useless, discarded part of anything, as opposed to what is chosen.^[5]
7. (vulgar) masturbation.^[5][1]
8. (Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua) The water supplied from a house's main pipe to its own plumbing, and (Nicaragua) a tap.^[5][20]
9. (Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua) nonsense, and (in the plural, Central America) lies.^[5][20]
10. (Chile, colloquial) Laziness; an effort.^[20][1]

Adjective

1. (Peru, colloquial) Excellent; pleasant.^[20][1]

Word family

• pajar
• pajizo
• pajoso
• pajuela
• pajonal
• pajilla
• empajar
• despajar
• pajero

Related words

• payaso
• pallete
• Latin palea
• Portuguese palha
• Catalan palla

Usage notes

After a colour word it names the pale yellow of dry straw: amarillo paja.^[24] The set phrase hombre de paja means a front man.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. paja
3. ^ 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, 342
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. paja
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. paja
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. paille
7. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4745
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6161
9. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. paja
11. ^ 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. paja
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. paja
13. ^ 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. 1184
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 80
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 521
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. paja
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 726
18. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. paja
19. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1999), Vocabulario de Puerto Rico, critical ed. by Humberto López Morales, Madrid: Arco/Libros (1st ed. 1937), p. 267
20. ^ a b c d e Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. paja
21. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 392
22. ^ 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. paja
23. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 774
24. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. paja