pezuelo

Forms

pezuelo m (plural pezuelos)^[1] An Aragonese inventory of 1374 spells it pecuelo; the Guzmán de Alfarache of 1599 has pizuelos.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *pecciolus (“little foot”).^[2][3][4] Wiktionary gives the attested Late Latin form peciolus (“little foot; fruit stalk”).^[1] Corominas explains this as a contracted *pediciolus, a diminutive of pes (“foot”), and the spelling with ⟨t⟩ as an error; the voiceless ⟨ç⟩ of the Spanish forms shows that Latin pronounced a double /kk/.^[2][3] The REW also takes the form with ⟨c⟩ as the only one of the manuscripts.^[5]

The same Latin word gave Romanian picior (“foot”), Italian picciuolo (“fruit stalk”), Occitan pesol and Catalan peçol, which in Catalan also names the fringe of warp threads left on a loom.^[5][6][7] In Old Spanish the word also meant the stalk of a flower or fruit.^[7] With a change of suffix the same base gave pezón, and the learned pecíolo is its doublet.^[3][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas suggests, with some doubt, that a pair of linen towels en un pecuelo in an Aragonese inventory of 1374 may already be the weaving term, unless it means “a piece of cloth”.^[2] The BDELC dates the word 1374.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In 1599 Mateo Alemán's rogue describes his rags hanging que parecían pizuelos de frisas, like the loose ends of a coarse cloth.^[2] The Academy's dictionaries from 1817 define it as the start of a woven cloth: a fringe of many threads to each of which one thread of the new warp is knotted.^[8][9][4] The Academy derived it from pie in 1884 and 1899, Alemany in 1917 from Latin petiolus, and the DLE today from *pecciolus.^{[10][11][12][4]} In Andalusia andar or estar en esos pezuelos means to dawdle instead of getting on with a planned task.^[13]

Timeline

• 1374 – an Aragonese inventory has pecuelo, perhaps this word.^[2][3]
• 1451–1481 – the form occurs in two Castilian versions of Lanfranc's surgery.^[14]
• 1599 – the Guzmán de Alfarache compares rags to pizuelos de frisas.^[2]
• 1817 – the Academy defines the weaving sense.^[8]
• 1884 – the Academy derives it from pie.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. (weaving) The start of a woven cloth: a fringe of threads to each of which a thread of the new warp is knotted.^[4][15][1]

Related words

• pezón
• pecíolo
• pie
• Catalan peçol

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 530
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pezón
4. ^ a b c d 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. pezuelo
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. peciolus
6. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. peçol
7. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 4976
8. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 669
9. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 838
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 825
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 774
12. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1310
13. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 478
14. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
15. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pezuelo