pollo

Forms

pollo m (plural pollos)^[1] The feminine polla is a young hen.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pullus (“young of an animal; chicken”).^[4][5][3][1] The Latin noun first meant the young of any animal, and was also used as an adjective, “very small”; this explains why the feminine polla means “girl” as early as the Mozarabic Chronicle of about 754, a sense Corominas takes to be traditional rather than a hypercorrect form of Latin puella (“girl”).^[4]

The same word is Catalan poll, Aragonese pollo, Asturian pollu, Galician polo and Italian pollo;^[6][7][8] The French word is the feminine poule “hen”, from Vulgar Latin pulla.^[6][7][8] The Catalan word meant a young cockerel rather than a chick throughout the Middle Ages.^[9]

The origin of the Latin word is disputed.^[1] Wiktionary gives two proposals: Proto-Indo-European *polH- (“animal young”), the root of Ancient Greek πῶλος (pôlos, “foal”) and Proto-Germanic *fulô (“foal”), or a root *put- seen in Latin putus (“boy”).^[1] The OLD prefers a form *putslos, comparing Sanskrit पुत्र (putrá-, “son”).^[10] De Vaan treats only the homonymous adjective meaning “drab, dark-coloured”, which belongs to another root.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Semejanza del mundo (c. 1223) mentions vnos pollos, young birds used together with a stone and some herbs.^[12] Corominas's first record is the Calila e Dimna of 1251.^[4][5] In the Libro de buen amor it is still a chick: „No hay más carne en él / que en pollo envernizo después de Sant Miguel” “there is no more meat on him than on a winter chick after Michaelmas”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The Latin sense “young of any animal” lived on in Old and classical Spanish: Nebrija defined pollo as the young of a tame bird, and Luis del Mármol wrote of ostrich chicks; the Academy's dictionaries kept “the young of any animal” as an obsolete sense into the 20th century.^[4][13][14] The sense “young cock”, which Malaret thought American, is in fact general and old, since the Quijote has it.^[4] In falconry a pollo is a bird that has not yet moulted.^[13]

Applied to people, the Academy recorded “shrewd, cunning man” in 1817 and “a lad, a young man” in 1869; in Quevedo ser un pollo meant to be a coward.^[15][16][4] In the 1860s the dandy called el pollo was a stock figure of the press, in Galdós and in the Canaries.^[17] The meat sense and the colloquial senses “row, fuss” and “gob of spit” are recent dictionary additions.^[3][18] In Mexico a pollo is a migrant who enters the United States without papers, and in Cuban cockfighting a young cock whose spurs are still short.^[19][20]

Timeline

• c. 1223 – the Semejanza del mundo has vnos pollos.^[12]
• c. 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre (in a 15th-century copy) compares fleeing Trojans to chicks that sense a kite.^[12]
• 1251 – the Calila e Dimna, Corominas's first record.^[4][5]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario speaks of the first chick of a swallow.^[21]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija defines it as the young of a hen.^[4]
• 1535 – the first record from the Americas, in Cartagena, on the price of a chicken.^[22]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines pollo as the hen's chick and polla as a young hen.^[2]
• 1817 – the Academy adds the figurative sense “shrewd man”.^[15]
• 1862 – Galdós writes about the young dandy called el pollo.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin pullus.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A young bird hatched from an egg, especially a chick of the hen.^[3][1]
2. A young cock or hen; a chicken.^[3][1]
3. Chicken meat: Para cenar hay pollo con patatas.^[3][1]
4. The brood of bees.^[3]
5. (colloquial) A row, a fuss, a scene.^[3][1]
6. (hunting) A bird that has not yet moulted.^[3]
7. (colloquial, rare) A young man, often in a scornful or joking tone.^[3][23]
8. (colloquial) A gob of spit.^[3]
9. (Mexico) A person who enters the United States without papers.^[19]

Word family

• polla
• pollada
• pollazón
• pollería
• pollero
• pollera
• pollito
• polluelo
• pollezno
• pollancón
• empollar

Related words

• pollino
• pollastre
• pollastro
• repollo
• pulular
• Latin pullus
• Catalan poll
• Italian pollo

Usage notes

The 2001 edition of the Academy's dictionary set pollo “gob of spit” apart as a second word without an etymology, and Vox calls it of uncertain origin; the DLE now gives it as a sense of the same word.^[18][24][3] Román explained the Chilean use by the likeness of the spit to an egg being hatched.^[25] The 19th-century dictionaries list proverbs about chicks born in January, such as el pollo de enero, a San Juan es comedero.^[26][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. 1221
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. pollo
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 600
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pollo
6. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 5269
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6838
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. poule
9. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 6, 649
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. pullus
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ 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. pollo
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 313
14. ^ 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. 847
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 688
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 618
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. pollo, DHECan
18. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. pollo
19. ^ 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. pollo, lla
20. ^ Pichardo, Esteban (1875), Diccionario provincial casi-razonado de vozes y frases cubanas, 4th ed., La Habana: Imprenta El Trabajo, p. 302
21. ^ 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. pollo
22. ^ 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. pollo
23. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pollo
24. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. pollo
25. ^ Román, Manuel Antonio (1901–1918), Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, 5 vols., Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de San José, p. 81
26. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 575