perezoso

Forms

perezoso (feminine perezosa, masculine plural perezosos, feminine plural perezosas)^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Spanish pereza (“laziness”) + -oso.^[2][1][3] García de Diego sets up Vulgar Latin *pigritiosus behind the Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan words.^[4] According to Corominas, the derivative replaced Latin piger (“sluggish, lazy”) in all the Gallo- and Ibero-Romance languages.^[3]

pereza continues from Latin pigritia (“sluggishness, laziness”), a derivative of the same adjective.^[3][5] De Vaan derives the adjective from Proto-Italic *pig-ro- (“inactive”), beside the verb piget (“it irks”).^[6] The corresponding words elsewhere are Portuguese preguiçoso, Galician perguiceiro, Catalan peresós, French paresseux and Italian pigrizioso.^[1][4][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas and the DEMel take the first record from Berceo, the Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos of about 1230.^[3][7] The Alfonsine Picatrix of 1256 says that whoever is born under a certain degree of Sagittarius sera perezoso minguado & dannador “will be lazy, needy and harmful”.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose already has both senses of the modern adjective, “negligent, idle” and “slow, heavy in movement”;^[8][9] Autoridades adds a third, someone reluctant to get out of bed.^[8][9] Terreros recorded perezoso as the name of an American animal that moves very little, the sloth, and the Academy described the animal in its 1899 edition.^[10][11] Salvá in 1846 equated it with perico ligero.^[12]

In the Americas the word also names pieces of furniture for resting: a deckchair (masculine in Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras and Uruguay, feminine perezosa in Argentina, Costa Rica and Peru), a rocking chair, and a wide wooden chair in Nicaragua.^[2][13] In Cantabria and León perezosa is a folding wall table, and in Cuba perezoso was a safety pin.^[2][14]

Timeline

• c. 1230 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos.^[3][7]
• 1256 – the Picatrix of Alfonso X's court.^[8]
• 1571 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico City.^[15]
• 1591 – Percyvall glosses it “slothfull”.^[16]
• 1786–1793 – Terreros records the name of the American animal.^[10]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary adds the sloth.^[11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. lazy, idle: careless or slack in doing what one should; also as a noun, a lazybones.^[2][1]
2. Slow or heavy in movement or action.^[2]
3. Reluctant to get out of bed in the morning.^[2]

Noun

1. (zoology) A sloth, a slow, tree-dwelling toothless mammal of tropical America.^[2][1]
2. (Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Uruguay) A deckchair (tumbona).^[2]
3. (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Uruguay) A rocking chair.^[13]

Related words

• pereza
• desperezarse
• Latin piger
• Portuguese preguiçoso

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. perezoso
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, 490
4. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 5021
5. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pereza
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. perezoso
8. ^ 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. perezoso
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 220
10. ^ a b Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 3, 98
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 766
12. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 828
13. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. perezoso
14. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 643
15. ^ 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. perezoso
16. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. s.v. perezoso