puñal

Forms

puñal m (plural puñales)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote punnal;^[2][3] Navarro-Aragonese texts have punyal.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is formed from Spanish puño + -al, first as an adjective meaning “that fits in the fist, the size of a fist”; the noun “dagger” arose by ellipsis from the phrase in which the adjective followed cuchillo “knife”.^[4][2][5][6] puño itself goes back to Latin pūgnus (“fist”).^[5]

The REW, García de Diego, Moliner and the 22nd edition of the DLE start instead from an unattested adjective Vulgar Latin *pugnāle, which would also underlie Italian pugnale, Old French poigniel, Occitan ponhal, Catalan punyal and Portuguese punhal.^{[7][8][9][10][1]} The Catalan dictionary of Alcover and Moll also explains the Catalan word as “belonging to the fist, held in the fist”.^[11] French poignard is a 15th-century reshaping of poignal, an adjective for weapons held in the fist that became the name of a short blade in the 14th century.^[12] Wiktionary also mentions a derivative of Latin pugna (“fight”), the source the DLE gives for a rare second adjective of the same spelling meaning “relating to a fight”.^[1][4]

The Latin word for fist comes from Proto-Italic *pugnos, from Proto-Indo-European *pewǵ- (“to prick, punch”), and is related to pungō (“to prick”); the OLD compares Ancient Greek πυγμή (pugmḗ, “fist”).^[1][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DHLE's first record is the adjective in the Fuero de Brihuega (c. 1242), spelt punnal, meaning “that can be held in the fist”.^[2] The Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250) tells of stones as big as fists falling from the clouds: cayeron de las nuves unas piedras puñales.^[14][5]

Semantic evolution

The adjective was used mostly with piedra and cuchillo until the 15th century and fell out of use in the 16th; a royal letter of 1261 and the Crónica de 1344 (cuchillos puñales) show the phrase from which the noun came.^[2][14] The noun “dagger” is first recorded in an inventory of 1362, as punyales, and in the Latin–Romance glossaries of El Escorial and Toledo (1375–1410).^[2][5] Nebrija gave it the Latin pugio.^[15] The Diccionario de Autoridades described it in 1737 as a weapon at most a third of a vara long that wounds only with the point, with a button near the hilt to steady the hand; the Academy changed the measure to two or three decimetres in 1899.^[16][2][17]

From the late 16th century the noun also meant a sudden, sharp grief: the DHLE's first example is from El pastor de Fílida (1582), and Terreros was the first lexicographer to record it.^[2][18] In the Canaries a puñal was a tool for cutting sugar cane in the 16th and 17th centuries.^[2][19] In Mexico and Nicaragua it is a derogatory word for a gay man, first recorded in 1968, and in Mexico an adjective “cowardly”; in the Dominican Republic it names the smell of sweaty armpits.^[2][20][21] Classical Nahuatl borrowed the word as puñal.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1242 – the adjective punnal “fitting in the fist” in the Fuero de Brihuega.^[2]
• 1240–1250 – piedras puñales “fist-sized stones” in the Libro de Alexandre.^[14][5]
• 1261 – cuchillos punnales in a royal letter of Alfonso X to León.^[2]
• 1344 – cuchillos puñales in the Crónica de 1344.^[14]
• 1362 – first record of the noun, punyales, in an inventory.^[2]
• 1375–1410 – the glossaries of El Escorial and Toledo;^[2][5][6] Corominas dates the noun to about 1400.^[2][5][6]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin pugio.^[15]
• 1512 – first record in the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[22]
• 1531 – the sugar-cane tool in the ordinances of Gran Canaria.^[2][19]
• 1582 – figurative “sharp grief” in El pastor de Fílida.^[2]
• 1737 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines the dagger.^[16]
• 1803 – the Academy first records the old adjective.^[2]
• 1968 – the Mexican sense “gay man” is first recorded.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A dagger: a short steel weapon, 20 to 30 centimetres long, that wounds only with its point: Escondía un puñal en la bota.^[4][23]
2. (figurative) Something that wounds the feelings; a sharp, sudden grief.^[2][18]
3. (Mexico, Nicaragua, derogatory) A homosexual man;^[20][1][2] (El Salvador, Nicaragua) an effeminate man.^[20][1][2]
4. (Dominican Republic) The smell of sweaty armpits.^[21]
5. (Canary Islands, historical) A tool for cutting and cleaning sugar cane.^[2][19]

Adjective

1. (obsolete) That fits in or can be held in the fist.^[4][2]
2. (Mexico, colloquial) Of a person: cowardly.^[20]

Word family

• apuñalar
• puñalada
• puñalote

Related words

• puño
• empuñar
• Latin pūgnus
• Portuguese punhal
• French poignard

Usage notes

The DLE also has a rare adjective puñal “relating to a fight”, which it derives from Latin pugna “fight”;^[4][24] Alemany gives it in the phrase pendón puñal.^[4][24] Moliner records the phrase poner un puñal en el pecho a alguien, to force someone to do something under threat of serious harm.^[9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Real Academia Española (2013–), Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (DHLE), https://www.rae.es/dhle, p. s.v. puñal
3. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. puñal
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. puñal
5. ^ 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, 696
6. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. puño
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 5256
9. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos
10. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. puñal
11. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. punyal
12. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
13. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. puñal
15. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 402
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 437
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía
18. ^ 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, 245
19. ^ a b c 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. puñal
20. ^ a b c d Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer
21. ^ a b Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. puñal
22. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies
23. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial
24. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena