puches

Forms

puches m pl or f pl (plural only)^[1] Nebrija and Lope de Rueda used puchas, with an ending influenced by the feminine gender.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pultes (“porridge”), the plural form of the noun.^[2][3][4][1] Latin used the noun mostly in the singular, but the plural is found in Juvenal and Persius.^[2] Among the literary Romance languages only Castilian and the Engadine form put have kept it, though traces remain in Old French pou and in dialects of northern and southern France.^[2][5]

De Vaan compares Ancient Greek πόλτος (póltos, “porridge”), but notes that a borrowing from Greek would have given an o-stem in Latin; both words may go back to a common base, perhaps related to pollen (“fine flour”), and the root may be a loan from a Mediterranean language.^[6] Wiktionary mentions a possible root Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“flour, dust”) or a substrate origin.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest record is an Old Spanish Bible of before 1300 (Escorial I.j.8): pan ni polienta nin puches non combredes “you shall eat neither bread nor parched grain nor porridge”.^[7][8] Corominas and the BDELC give Nebrija's puchas (1495) as the first record.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In 15th-century medical texts puches are poultices of flour and water.^[7] Covarrubias described them in 1611 as a dish of flour and oil much eaten in antiquity before bread was invented, and the Diccionario de Autoridades defined them as the same as gachas.^[9][10] In 1526 Fernández de Oviedo compared the maize porridge of the Indies to puches.^[7] The derivative puchada dates from 1513.^[2] In Bilbao pucha means curd.^[2]

In Guatemala and Honduras puches are the long feathers on each side of the face of some cocks and hens, and in Guatemala, figuratively, a man's sideburns.^[11][12] In New Mexico the word names an egg-and-sugar biscuit, and old Spanish slang used it for mud.^[13][14]

Timeline

• before 1300 – an Old Spanish Bible forbids eating puches.^[7]
• 1431 – the Tesoro de la medicina uses it for a poultice.^[7]
• 1495 – Nebrija gives puchas for Latin puls.^[2][3]
• 1526 – Fernández de Oviedo compares maize porridge to puches.^[7]
• 1555 – Laguna's Dioscorides has the form puches.^[2]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the dish.^[9]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades equates it with gachas.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the Latin etymon for the first time.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. porridge; gachas: flour cooked in water with salt.^[4][16][1]
2. (Guatemala, Honduras) The long feathers on each side of the face of some fowl;^[11] (Guatemala) sideburns.^[11]

Related words

• puchero
• gachas
• polenta
• Latin puls

Usage notes

Puches is a plural noun, masculine or feminine; the Academy noted from 1869 that it is sometimes used in the singular.^[4][17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 670
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. puches
4. ^ a b c 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. puches
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. puls
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. puches
8. ^ 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
9. ^ 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. 1234
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 421
11. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. puches
12. ^ Membreño, Alberto (1897), Hondureñismos: vocabulario de los provincialismos de Honduras, 2nd ed., Tegucigalpa: Tipografía Nacional, p. 144
13. ^ Cobos, Rubén (1983), A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, p. 159
14. ^ Besses, Luis (c. 1905), Diccionario de argot español o lenguaje jergal gitano, delincuente profesional y popular, Barcelona: Manuel Soler, p. 141
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 876
16. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. puches
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 641