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puerco

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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word puerco

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
1044 a charter in Oelschläger's list More words from the 11th century
Inherited from
Latin porcus via Old Spanish
Ultimate origin
Proto-Indo-European *pórḱos
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
Latin porcus
Catalan porc
Italian porco
Romanian porc
Spanish puerco
French porc
Derivations
From the same root
Latin porcārius ← porcus
Latin porcellus ← porcus
Latin porcīnus ← porcus
Italian porcile ← porco
Romanian porcar ← porc
Romanian porcărie ← porc
Romanian porcoi ← porc

Pronunciation

  • /ˈpweɾko/, [ˈpweɾ.ko][1]

Forms

puerco m (plural puercos, feminine puerca, feminine plural puercas)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish puerco, inherited from Latin porcus (“pig, hog”); the feminine puerca continues porca (“sow”).[2][1][3][4][5] Its earliest form, in a document of 976, is porco, without the diphthong.[5]

The same Latin word is Portuguese porco, Galician porco, Catalan porc, French porc, Italian porco and Romanian porc.[6][7]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *porkos and Proto-Indo-European *pórḱos (“young pig”), which de Vaan glosses “digger”, from the root meaning “to dig up” that also gave the Latin word for the ridge between furrows.[8][1] Its cognates include Old High German farh, Old English fearh (“piglet”) and Lithuanian par̃šas (“piglet”).[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds the word in a charter of 1044 and in other early charters.[3][4] The DHLE gives a Latin–Romance document of 976 with porco, and puerco in the Fazienda de Ultramar (c. 1200), always for the pig.[5] Berceo compares a crowd to pigs running to acorns: Todos corrien a elli commo puercos a landes.[9][3]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish puerco also meant the wild boar, even without an adjective, as in the Libro de Alexandre; the hunting books keep this sense, and Nebrija distinguishes puerco montés o javalí and puerco espín.[3][10] The word was in general use through the Middle Ages and until the end of the 17th century, when its growing figurative use as an adjective, “very dirty”, led to its replacement by cerdo in Spain and by chancho in South America.[3] Moliner calls it less general than cerdo and rather rural.[11]

The figurative senses entered the dictionaries one by one: “slovenly, dirty” in Autoridades, “coarse, ill-bred” in 1817, and “mean, venal” in 1869.[12][13][14] Nebrija also used the plural puercas for scrofula.[3] In Mexico puerco is the usual word for pork, and in slang a police officer, a sense that Wiktionary takes as a semantic loan from English pig.[1] In Central America and Mexico puerco de monte is the peccary.[15]

Timeline

  • 976 – porco in a Latin–Romance document.[5]
  • 1044 – the first record in a Spanish charter, according to Corominas.[3][4]
  • c. 1200 – puerco in the Fazienda de Ultramar.[5]
  • 1280 – the General Estoria has puerco montés “wild boar”.[16]
  • c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin sus and porcus for it.[17][3]
  • 1515 – first record in the Americas, from Tierra Firme.[18]
  • 1611 – Covarrubias compares the pig, useful only on the day it is killed, to the miser.[19]
  • 1726–1739 – Autoridades records the adjective “dirty” and the proverb Al más ruin puerco se le da la mejor bellota.[10]
  • 1869 – the Academy adds the sense “mean, venal”.[14]
  • 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin porcus.[20]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Pig, hog: the domestic cerdo.[2][1]
  2. (colloquial) A dirty, slovenly person; also as an adjective: No seas puerco y lávate las manos.[2]
  3. (colloquial) A coarse, ill-mannered person; also as an adjective.[2]
  4. (colloquial) A mean, self-seeking or venal person; also as an adjective.[2]
  5. (hunting) The wild boar, jabalí.[2][10]
  6. (feminine) The woodlouse, cochinilla.[2]
  7. (Mexico) Pork, pig meat.[1]
  8. (Mexico, slang, derogatory) A police officer.[1]

Adjective

  1. (colloquial) Of a thing: dirty, stained: Tienes la camisa puerca.[2][1]

Word family

  • porcuno
  • porquero
  • emporcar
  • porquería
  • porqueriza
  • puercoespín
  • cerdo
  • Latin porcus
  • Portuguese porco

Usage notes

Old Spanish puerca “ridge between furrows”, which survives in Aragonese, is a different word, from Latin porca “ridge”, not the feminine of porcus; the verb aporcar “to earth up” comes from it.[4][3] Puerco espín is the porcupine and puerco de mar the porpoise.[2][11]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. puerco
  3. ^ 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, 675
  4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. puerco
  5. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (DHLE), https://www.rae.es/dhle, p. s.v. puerco
  6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6666
  7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
  8. ^ 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
  9. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra
  10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 423
  11. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. puerco
  12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 424
  13. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 713
  14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 641
  15. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. puerco
  16. ^ 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. puerco
  17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 402
  18. ^ 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. puerco
  19. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1235
  20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 877

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Puerco.” Etymologically, 13 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/puerco. Accessed 14 Nov. 2026.

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