pimiento

Forms

pimiento m (plural pimientos)^[1]

Etymology

It is a derivative from Spanish pimienta (“black pepper”) with a change of gender, after the pattern of fruit and tree names such as manzana beside manzano and cereza beside cerezo.^[2] Corominas stresses that the masculine is recorded much later than the feminine, and the DLE also derives it from the feminine noun.^[2][3] Wiktionary, the 2001 DRAE and Moliner instead derive it directly from the Latin singular, with pigmento as its learned doublet.^[1][4][5]

The base word continues Latin pigmenta, the plural of pigmentum (“colouring matter, paint”).^[2][6] In late authors the Latin word came to mean a herbal juice used in medicine, then an ingredient in general and, in Palladius (5th century), a seasoning.^[2] Spanish narrowed it further to “pepper”.^[2] Corominas finds the long vowel that the REW posits for the Latin word unlikely, and suggests that the Castilian diphthong may be due to metaphony.^[2]

The Latin plural also gave Portuguese pimenta “pepper”, while Old French piment and Catalan piment meant a spiced wine and Old Occitan pimenta a spice in general.^[2][7] Berceo's piment “spiced wine” was taken from that Gallo-Romance word.^[2][7] The singular is formed from pingō (“to paint”) with the suffix -mentum.^[8][1] Wiktionary traces it ultimately to the root of Proto-Indo-European *peyḱ-.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest hit is in Pedro de Toledo's translation of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed (1419–1432), where el pimiento is a spice or aromatic offering.^[9] Mid-15th-century texts also use it for spices: the Etimologías romanceadas of Saint Isidore speak of physicians grinding los pimientos, and a recipe book of before 1500 forbids eating ajos ni pimientos “garlic or peppers”.^[9] Corominas's first record is Nebrija's vocabulary (c. 1495), which glosses pimiento as the tree that bears pepper, Latin arbor piperis.^[2][9]

Semantic evolution

In 1591 a writer in Mexico City equated the native chile with what in Spain was called pimientos, and in the Americas the word was also applied to a tree with a red fruit.^[10][6] In inland Argentina and Chile it names a large tree, the aguaribay, and the DAMER records this sense, the pepper tree pirul, for Nicaragua, Colombia, Chile and Argentina.^[2][11]

Covarrubias (1611) describes a plant with a red fruit that burns like pepper and, toasted in the oven, takes its place.^[12] The Diccionario de Autoridades gives both the tree that bears pepper and the garden plant whose fruit, green and then bright red, is toasted and ground into pimiento molido; it also lists a smaller, rounder and much hotter pimiento de las Indias.^[13] The Academy's dictionary of 1843 names the garden plant Capsicum annuum and lists varieties such as pimiento de cerecilla and pimiento de hocico de buey or de bonete.^[14]

Colloquially un pimiento means “nothing at all”, in phrases such as no importar un pimiento.^[5][15] The Spanish word passed into English as pimiento.^[1] The REW holds that French piment in its modern sense comes from Spanish, and French Wiktionary treats some of its modern senses as semantic loans from pimiento.^[7][16]

Timeline

• 1419–1432 – earliest hit in the CDH, in Pedro de Toledo's translation of Maimonides, for a spice.^[9]
• c. 1450 – the Etimologías romanceadas of Saint Isidore mention grinding los pimientos.^[9]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija records pimiento as the pepper tree; this is Corominas's first record.^[2][6]
• 1591 – in Mexico City the native chile is equated with Spanish pimientos.^[10]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the red fruit used in place of pepper.^[12]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records pimiento molido and the hot pimiento de las Indias.^[13]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary identifies the plant as Capsicum annuum.^[14]
• 1899 – the Academy gives Latin pigmentum as its etymology; the current DLE derives it from pimienta.^[17][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. The pepper plant: an annual herb of the nightshade family, of American origin, with a hollow, roughly conical green, red or yellow berry.^[3][1]
2. The edible fruit of this plant, a capsicum: Para la cena asamos tres pimientos rojos.^[3][1]
3. The shrub that bears black pepper (pimentero).^[3]
4. Ground red pepper, pimentón.^[3]
5. The plant disease rust (roya).^[3]
6. (Nicaragua, Colombia, Chile, Argentina) The pepper tree (pirul).^[11][2]

Word family

• pimentón
• pimiento morrón

Related words

• pimienta
• pigmento
• pimentero
• Latin pigmentum
• Portuguese pimenta

Usage notes

Pimiento morrón, also pimiento de bonete, is the large, sweet bell pepper.^[3][5] Pimiento de cerecilla is a hot chilli (guindilla).^[3][5] In Spain, Mexico, Peru and Guatemala pimiento alone often stands for pimiento morrón.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 549
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. pimiento
4. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. pimiento
5. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pimiento
6. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pimienta
7. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. pimiento
10. ^ a b 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. pimiento
11. ^ 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. pimiento
12. ^ 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. 1214
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 273
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 564
15. ^ 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. 577
16. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. fr piment
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 780