plumaje

Forms

plumaje m (plural plumajes)^[1] Old Spanish and the classical language wrote plumage.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is formed from Spanish pluma + -aje.^[1][4][5] pluma is from Latin plūma (“feather, down”).^[5] The same formation is Catalan plomatge, French plumage and Italian piumaggio.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first record is in Juan Manuel's Libro del caballero y del escudero (1326, in a copy of about 1400), where good falconers know their falcons por talle et por façiones et por plumage “by build, by features and by plumage”.^[2] This is the falconer's sense, the kind of feathers that tells one bird of prey from another.^[2][7] Corominas dates the word only to 1490, in Alfonso de Palencia's dictionary.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

The general sense, the feathers of a bird, appears in Fernández de Heredia's Flor de las ystorias de Orient (1377–1396), which describes birds as large as pheasants with very beautiful plumage.^[2] In Mexico in the 1530s the word was used for the feather ornaments of the native peoples, worn with bows and in dances.^[8] Autoridades (1737) gave three senses: the feathers that cover a bird, the plume worn on hats and in former times on helmets, and in falconry a species of bird of prey or the colour of its feathers.^[3] The 1884 dictionary rewrote the falconry sense as the kind of feather that distinguishes the species of game birds, the wording the DLE still uses.^[9][7] Tagalog borrowed the word as plumahe.^[1]

Timeline

• 1326 – Juan Manuel uses plumage of falcons (in a copy of about 1400).^[2]
• 1377–1396 – Fernández de Heredia, the first record in a contemporary manuscript.^[2]
• 1386 – López de Ayala's book of hawking treats the plumajes and illnesses of birds.^[2]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia, Corominas's first record.^[4][5]
• 1532 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico.^[8]
• 1737 – Autoridades records the plume on hats and helmets.^[3]
• 1884 – the Academy defines the hunting sense as it stands today.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. The feathers that cover and adorn a bird; plumage: El macho luce un plumaje mucho más vivo que la hembra.^[7][10][1]
2. A plume of feathers worn as an ornament on hats, helmets and morions (morriones).^[7][10]
3. (hunting) The kind of feather by which the species of game birds are told apart.^[7]

Word family

• plumajero
• plumajería

Related words

• plumón
• plumero
• penacho

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. plumaje
3. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 302
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 583
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pluma
6. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 861
7. ^ a b c d e 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. plumaje
8. ^ 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. plumaje
9. ^ 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. 842
10. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. plumaje