pueblo

Forms

pueblo m (plural pueblos)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin populus (“people, body of citizens”).^[2][3][4][1] Old Spanish texts also write it poblo, publo, poulo and puebro, and Salamanca still has this form.^[5][6] The learned form of the same Latin word is pópulo.^[6]

The same Latin word is Portuguese povo, Galician pobo, Asturian pueblu, Catalan poble, Occitan pòble, French peuple, Italian popolo and Romanian popor.^[7][6][8] Old Galician-Portuguese had poboo, poblo and pobro.^[9]

The Latin word, older poplus, goes back to Proto-Italic *poplos (“army”), which de Vaan infers from Umbrian, where the word means “able-bodied citizens”, as well as the verb populor (“to ravage”), first perhaps “to have an army pass through”.^[10] The further origin is unknown: de Vaan finds a link with Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁- (“to be full”) hard to justify, and mentions an Etruscan source proposed by Watmough.^[10][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy), where a hill will be called the Cid's „mientra que sea el pueblo de moros e de la yente cristiana” “as long as there are the people of the Moors and the Christian folk”.^[11][2] Here and in tod el pueblo (line 1318) the word means a nation or the whole body of inhabitants, as in Latin.^[12][2]

Semantic evolution

In the 13th century pueblo, and often the plural pueblos, was also simply “people, a crowd”, as in Berceo and the Libro de Alexandre;^[2][13] Corominas notes that medieval French shared this sense and passed it to English people.^[2][13] Alfonso X's prose has “city, settlement”, “population” and “the common people”.^[14] The sense “a place smaller than a city but larger than a village” is found from Juan Ruiz on, and among the other Romance languages only in modern Catalan, Galician and Portuguese.^[2] Corominas thinks that this sense has a separate source, a noun formed on poblar, like población and puebla.^[2]

Covarrubias (1611) defines the word as both the place and its people.^[15] Autoridades has the inhabited place, its inhabitants, and the common people as distinct from the nobles.^[16] The Academy's 1884 edition gave the etymology and the sense “nation”, and that of 1899 added “small settlement”.^[17][18] In Chile pueblo can be a village or a city alike, and in Argentina pueblero is a townsman.^[2] In Peru pueblo joven is a euphemism for a shanty town.^[19] English borrowed pueblo in 1808 for a village of Spanish America, and by 1834 for the native peoples of Arizona and New Mexico who lived in communal villages.^[20]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses pueblo for a people.^[11][2]
• 1218–c. 1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes has an election confirmed „de todo el pueblo”.^[11]
• 1256 – the Alfonsine Picatrix uses pueblos for settlements.^[14]
• 1272–1275 – the General estoria uses it for the common people.^[14]
• 1526 – first record from the Americas, in Nicaragua, of four pueblos that were hardly villages.^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias: the place and its people.^[15]
• 1808 – English pueblo.^[20]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology.^[17]
• 1899 – the Academy adds the sense “small settlement”.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. A town or city: un pueblo grande con mercado.^[4][1]
2. A smaller settlement, a village: un pueblo de doscientos habitantes.^[4][1]
3. The people of a place, region or country: el pueblo vasco.^[4][22]
4. The common people, the working classes: el pueblo llano.^[4][1]
5. A nation, a country with its own government.^[4]
6. A community of people of the same origin, settled or not: los pueblos indígenas.^[22]

Word family

• poblar
• poblado
• población
• poblador
• puebla
• despoblar
• pueblerino
• pueblero

Related words

• popular
• populoso
• populacho
• Latin populus
• Portuguese povo
• English people

Usage notes

Defensor del pueblo is the Spanish ombudsman.^[4] Populacho “rabble” (1737) is a separate loan, from Italian popolaccio.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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, 673
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pueblo
4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. pueblo
5. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. pueblo
6. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 5146
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. populus
8. ^ 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, 626
9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2674
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ 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. pueblo
12. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. s.v. pueblo
13. ^ a b Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. s.v. pueblo
14. ^ a b c 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. pueblo
15. ^ 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
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 422
17. ^ 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. 876
18. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 822
19. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. pueblo
20. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
21. ^ 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. pueblo
22. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pueblo