peón

Forms

peón m (plural peones)^[1] Old Spanish wrote peon and the older pedon, plural pedones.^[2][3] Aragonese texts of the 13th century have peyón.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish peon, inherited from Late Latin pedō (“foot soldier”).^[3][4][5][1] Glosses define the Latin word as “one who goes on foot”, and it survives in all the western Romance languages.^[3] The DHLF adds that the word is recorded in classical Latin as a surname, that late glossaries give it the sense “big-footed”, and that Medieval Latin uses it for a foot soldier.^[6] Gómez de Silva likewise explains it as Late Latin “person with broad feet”.^[7]

The same word is Portuguese peão, French pion and Italian pedone.^[1][8][6] Its base is pēs (“foot”), from Proto-Indo-European *pṓds, the source of Greek, Sanskrit and Germanic words for “foot”.^[1][9]

The Academy derived the word from the Italian cognate in 1884, an etymology the current dictionary has dropped.^[10][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds the plural pedones in a charter of 1074 and peón in one of 1100.^[3][4] The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) uses peones for the foot soldiers, who receive half a horseman's share of the booty: a los peones la meatad sin falla “to the foot soldiers half, without fail”.^[11][12]

Semantic evolution

“Foot soldier” is the sense of the Cid, of Berceo and of an Alfonsine text of about 1254, which names caualleros and peones together.^[3][13] The Acedrex already calls the smallest chess piece peón.^[3] The sense “day labourer” appears in an Aragonese fuero of 1350 and in Nebrija, who has peon lancero for the soldier and peon jornalero for the hired worker.^[3][14] In Autoridades (1737) the worker comes first, then the infantryman, now mostly called infante, and the boys' spinning top, with a quotation from Quevedo.^[15]

The top was named, Corominas suggests, by comparison with the movement of a foot soldier; from its diminutive peoncillo came peonza, recorded about 1475.^[4] In the Americas the word first meant the infantry of the conquest (Mexico City, 1531).^[16] Corominas discusses the peón of the Argentine pampa.^[16][3] Today it also names the subordinate bullfighter (peón de brega) and, figuratively, a person used as a pawn in another's plans.^[5][17]

Timeline

• 1074 – the plural pedones in a charter.^[3][4]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid gives the peones half the horsemen's share.^[11]
• c. 1254 – an Alfonsine text names peones beside horsemen.^[13]
• 1350 – the sense “day labourer” in an Aragonese fuero.^[3]
• c. 1475 – peonza, the spinning top named after the peón.^[4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija separates the soldier from the hired worker.^[14]
• 1531 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City.^[16]
• 1737 – Autoridades records the labourer, the soldier and the toy top.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary adds the draughts piece, the shaft of a water wheel and the beehive.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A labourer who does unskilled manual work: Los peones descargaron la arena antes del mediodía.^[5][1]
2. (military) A foot soldier; infante.^[5][1]
3. A wooden spinning top, cone-shaped with an iron tip, set spinning with a cord.^[5][1]
4. (chess) A pawn, each of the eight smallest pieces of each side; also a piece in draughts.^[5][18][1]
5. A person who serves another's plans and interests.^[5]
6. The upright shaft of a noria or of any machine that turns like it.^[5][1]
7. A beehive.^[5][1]
8. (bullfighting) A peón de brega, the bullfighter who assists the matador.^[5][1]
9. (dated) A pedestrian (peatón).^[5]

Word family

• peonada
• peonaje
• peonza

Related words

• peatón
• pie
• Latin pēs
• Portuguese peão

Usage notes

The feminine of the worker sense is peona.^[17][1] A separate learned word peón, the metrical foot of one long and three short syllables, comes from Latin paeon and Greek; the Academy listed it apart in 1884.^[10][19][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. peón
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 530
4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pie
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. peón
6. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. pion
7. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 537
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2509
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. pēs
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 812
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. peón
12. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 385
13. ^ 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. peón
14. ^ a b 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. peón
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. peón
16. ^ a b c 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. peón
17. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. peón 1
18. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. peón
19. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. peón 2