pelar

Forms

pelar (first-person singular present pelo, first-person singular preterite pelé, past participle pelado)^[1] The Fuero of Viguera and Val de Funes, of the 13th century, writes pellare.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pilāre (“to remove the hair”), from pilus (“hair”).^{[3][4][5][1][6]} In classical Latin the verb is recorded only as an intransitive “to grow hairy”; the sense “to strip of hair, depilate” is Late Latin.^[7][8][9] From “to remove the hair” Spanish went on to “to remove the skin, to peel”.^[4] The Academy's dictionary of 1884 split the word, deriving the sense “to peel” from pellis (“skin”), and Portuguese dictionaries still derive pelar in some senses from pelo (“hair”) and in others from pele (“skin”).^[10][11][12] The French verb peler was likewise associated with Old French pel (“skin”).^[8]

The same Latin verb is Catalan pelar, Occitan pelar and Italian pelare.^[13][3][1] The origin of the Latin noun is uncertain: Wiktionary notes that the older reconstruction of an Indo-European word for “hair” is no longer accepted.^[1][14] The verb pillar “to catch”, from Italian, goes back to a Vulgar Latin form of a homonymous Latin verb.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250) has a chapter Del que a otro baruas pelare “on him who plucks another man's beard”.^[15] Corominas dates the verb to 1335, in Juan Ruiz.^[4][3] Earlier CDH hits such as Pele Cidez are personal names.^[15]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija translates pelar “to pull out the hair” with Latin depilo and pilo.^[16] Covarrubias (1611) adds the sense “to eat up someone's fortune, as harlots fleece young men”, and pelarse “to lose one's hair through illness”.^[17] Autoridades gives the plucking of birds, the husking of almonds and chestnuts and the falconer's sense, a falcon eating a bird with its feathers.^[18] In 1817 the Academy added “to win all someone's money at gambling” and “to strip someone of his goods by deceit or force”; in 1884 the phrase duro de pelar “hard to achieve”.^[19][10]

The Americas have many senses: “to discredit” in Chile, “to flog” in Venezuela and Puerto Rico, and with the reflexive “to run away”, “to die”, or pelársela “to make a mistake”.^[20][21][22] A record of 1637 from Mexico speaks of officials who pelar los Indios “fleece the Indians”.^[23] In Andalusia pelar means “to be boiling hot”.^[24]

Timeline

• 1218–c. 1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes: baruas pelare.^[15]
• 13th century – pellare in the Fuero of Viguera and Val de Funes.^[2]
• 1335 – the first record in Corominas, in Juan Ruiz.^[4][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives depilo and pilo.^[16][25]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the sense “to fleece”.^[17]
• 1637 – the first record from Mexico, “to fleece”.^[23]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades lists hair, feathers, husks and the falconer's sense.^[18]
• 1817 – the Academy adds the senses of gambling and robbery.^[19]
• 1884 – the Academy records duro de pelar.^[10]
• 1917 – Alemany lists senses from Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and Honduras.^[20]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also reflexive) To cut or pull out the pelo of a person or animal: Lo pelaron casi al rape en el cuartel.^[5][26][1]
2. To skin an animal or pluck a bird; to shell shellfish: Pela los langostinos antes de freírlos.^[5][1]
3. To peel: to remove the skin, husk or bark of something: Peló dos mandarinas para el niño.^[5][26][1]
4. (colloquial) To fleece: to leave someone without money.^[5][1]
5. (falconry) Of a falcon: to eat a bird that still has its feathers.^[5][18]
6. (colloquial, rare) To criticise someone, run them down.^[5][1]
7. (reflexive) To lose one's hair.^[5][1]
8. (reflexive) To lose skin through wear or an accident: Se me peló la nariz en la playa.^[5][1]
9. (reflexive, Ecuador) To make a mistake.^[5][21]
10. (reflexive, colloquial, El Salvador, Mexico) To die (morir).^[5][21]
11. (reflexive, Mexico) To run away, to flee in a hurry.^[5][21]

Word family

• pelado
• pelador
• peladura
• pelagatos
• pelapatatas
• pela
• peladilla
• repelar

Related words

• pelo
• pelón
• peludo
• pillar

Usage notes

Common phrases are duro de pelar “hard to convince or beat; hard to do” and hace un frío que pela “it is bitterly cold”.^[5][9] Pelar la pava means “to court”.^[27]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. pelar
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 465
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pelo
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. pelar
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b c Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 576
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. 807
11. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro
12. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon
13. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
14. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
15. ^ 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. pelar
16. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 395
17. ^ 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. 1203
18. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 189
19. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 654
20. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1285
21. ^ a b c d Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. pelar
22. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. pelar
23. ^ a b Grupo IATEXT, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, AMERLEX: corpus of americanisms in early texts on the Americas (online database)
24. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 466
25. ^ 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
26. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pelar
27. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses