peinar

Forms

peinar (first-person singular present peino, first-person singular preterite peiné, past participle peinado)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote peynar and peynnar.^[2][3] A variant pendar is found in the Libro de Alexandre, in Lucas Fernández and other Leonese texts, in the poet Carvajales and in 16th-century eclogues.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish peynar, inherited from Latin pectinō (“to comb”).^[6][1][4][7] The Latin verb was formed from pecten (“comb”).^[1][8] In imperial Latin it replaced the older verb pectō (“to comb”), and it also meant “to harrow young corn”.^[9][10]

The same Latin verb is Portuguese pentear, Galician peitear, Asturian peñar, Catalan pentinar, Occitan penchenar, French peigner, Italian pettinare and Romanian pieptăna.^{[11][4][5][12]} Corominas explains the Spanish form by the consonant group left when the unstressed vowel after the stress was lost: it was usually simplified, as in peine and in this verb, but in some areas its consonants changed places, which gave the old variant pendar.^[4] He rejects as unnecessary García de Diego's explanation by metathesis.^[4]

The Latin noun and verb go back to Proto-Italic forms meaning “comb” and “to comb”, and to Proto-Indo-European *p(e)tḱ-, with cognates in Ancient Greek πέκω (pékō, “to comb, shear”) and Lithuanian pèšti (“to pluck”).^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

Alfonso X's Lapidario (c. 1250, in a copy of the mid-13th century) has the verb in a recipe: si despues en aquella agua moiaren el peyne & peynaren con el los cabellos; tinnense negros “if they then dip the comb in that water and comb the hair with it, the hair is dyed black”.^[2][14] The Poridat de las poridades of the same years speaks of combing as good for the head: el peynnar fara salir los baffos que suben a la cabeça.^[2] The participle peinados, “combed (hair)”, is in the Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250, in a 15th-century copy).^[2][3] Corominas dated the verb from Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor, about 1335.^[4][7]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija gave Latin pecto and pexo for peinar la cabeça, and a separate entry for combing wool (peinar cardando lana).^[15] Autoridades defined the verb as untangling or arranging the hair, especially of the head, and by extension the hair or wool of animals; it also recorded the carpenters' sense “to rub lightly against something”, said of a door leaf that catches on the other, and noted that poets make the mountains “comb” the clouds.^[16] The Academy's dictionary of 1843 added the sense “to cut away the rock or earth of a mountain, making it steep”, the poetic “to part gently” (birds comb the wind, ships the waves) and the phrase no peinarse para alguno, said of a woman who will not be for the man courting her.^[17]

The sense “to search an area thoroughly”, said of the police or a group of searchers, is not in the Academy's dictionary of 1899 but is in that of 2001.^[18][19] In football the verb means to glance the ball on with the head.^[20] In card playing, especially in Andalusia, it means to shuffle by drawing the top and bottom cards together, a cheat's trick.^[21][22] Peinar canas, “to comb grey hairs”, means to be old.^[22] In the Americas the verb is pronominal slang for “to die” in Mexico, and means “to steal” in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua; in rural Guatemala, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic it means to clear a field of weeds with a machete.^[23]

Timeline

• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre (15th-century copy) has the participle peinados and the variant pendar.^[2][4]
• c. 1250 – Alfonso X's Lapidario and the Poridat de las poridades use peynar and peynnar.^[2][14]
• c. 1335 – Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor, the DCECH's first record.^[4][7]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija records the verb and its derivative despeinar.^[15][7]
• 1635 – the first record from the Americas, in Guatemala.^[24]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades adds the carpenters' sense “to rub lightly”.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy derives the verb from peine; its dictionary now gives Latin pectināre.^[25][6]
• 2001 – the Academy's dictionary has the sense “to search an area thoroughly”.^[19]

Meanings

Verb

1. To comb and arrange someone's hair; also reflexive, to comb one's hair: Se peinó deprisa antes de salir.^[6][1]
2. To comb or clean the hair or wool of an animal.^[6][22]
3. To cut away part of the stone or earth of a rock or mountain, making it steep.^[6]
4. Of a group of people: to search an area minutely for someone or something: Los voluntarios peinaron el bosque toda la noche.^[6][1]
5. Of a thing, chiefly among carpenters: to touch or graze another lightly.^[6]
6. (football) To glance the ball on with the head.^[20]
7. (card games) To shuffle a pack by drawing the top and bottom cards at once.^[22][21]
8. (Mexico, slang, pronominal) To die.^[23]
9. (Central America) To steal.^[23]

Word family

• peinado
• peinador
• despeinar
• repeinar

Related words

• peine
• pendejo
• empeine
• pectíneo
• Latin pecten
• Portuguese pentear

Usage notes

Old Spanish also had a verb peinar “to pawn”, from peino “pledge”, Latin pignus; the Academy kept it as obsolete in the 19th century, and Moliner lists it as a separate word.^[26][17][22] The phrase no peinarse una mujer para alguien, “not to be for the man courting her”, is now little used.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. peinar
3. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. peinar
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 459
5. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. pectinare
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. peinar
7. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. peine
8. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 534
9. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. peinar
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. pectinō
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
12. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. peñar
13. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
14. ^ 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. peinar
15. ^ 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. peinar
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. peinar
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 545
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 757
19. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. peinar
20. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. peinar
21. ^ a b Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 465
22. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. peinar
23. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. peinar
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. peinar
25. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 806
26. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. pignus