pulpa

Forms

pulpa f (plural pulpas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pulpa (“flesh; pulp of fruit”), a semi-learned word.^[2][3][4][1] The other Romance languages changed the short Latin /u/ to /o/, as in Portuguese polpa, Galician polpa, Catalan polpa, Italian polpa and Old French poupe;^[2][5][6] and the REW lists Romanian pulpă beside them.^[2][5][6] The Aragonese of Ansó also has polpa.^[2]

García de Diego calls the Castilian word learned.^[6] Corominas finds that too strong, since Spanish also keeps /u/ in dulce and surco: learned influence only restored the /l/ of a popular form *pupa, which would have developed like duz from Latin dulcis, and which could not survive beside the nursery word pupa “sore”.^[2][1]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *pelpā, since Umbrian pelmner (“of meat”) shows that the first vowel was /e/.^[7][1] Bénaben and the OLD regard the further origin as unknown.^[8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first hit of the CDH is the Libro de los caballos (c. 1275), on where to open a horse's hide: in a fleshy place, assi como en pulpa “as in the flesh”.^[10][11] Corominas's first record is later, the Leyes de Moros of the 14th or 15th century, where it means the pad of the finger.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

By the late 14th century the word also names the flesh of fruit, in the Libro de Palladio (1380–1385), and a Bible of about 1400 has la pulpa de su oreja “the lobe of his ear”.^[10][12] Alfonso de Palencia defines it as meat without fat and Nebrija as meat without bone.^[2][13] Covarrubias in 1611 adds a fanciful Latin etymology.^[2][13][14] The Diccionario de Autoridades extends it to similar things, quoting Acosta on the pulp of the cassia fruit, and the Academy in 1817 adds the pith of woody plants.^[15][16] The modern dictionaries add industrial senses: crushed fruit for canning, the residue of sugar beet, and the pulp of paper making.^[4][17][1]

In Cuba pulpa is especially the pulp of tamarind made into a sweet paste, and figuratively something excellent: ese edificio quedó pulpa.^[2][18][19] The Americanism pulpero “grocer, tavern keeper” comes from pulpa, because the pulp of tropical fruit and the sweets made from it were the main goods sold in the early Caribbean colonies;^[2][3] Corominas rejects a derivation from pulque for reasons of sound and geography.^[2][3]

Timeline

• c. 1275 – the Libro de los caballos.^[10][11]
• 1380–1385 – the pulp of fruit in the Libro de Palladio.^[10]
• c. 1400 – la pulpa de su oreja in a Bible translation.^[10][12][3]
• 14th or 15th century – the Leyes de Moros, in the sense “pad of the finger”.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: carne sin vesso, Latin pulpa and pulpamentum; first record of pulpejo.^[13][3]
• 1551 – the first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[20]
• 1586 – first record of the Americanism pulpero.^[3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the word with a Latin etymology of his own.^[14]
• 1627 – first record of pulpería.^[3]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary adds the pith of woody plants.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology for the first time.^[21]

Meanings

Noun

1. The fleshy part of meat, without bone or gristle.^[4][1]
2. The soft fleshy part of fruit, pulp: Quita la piel y aprovecha la pulpa del mango.^[4][17]
3. The pith of woody plants.^[4][1]
4. (canning) Fresh fruit stoned and crushed.^[4]
5. (sugar industry) The residue of sugar beet after the juice is extracted, used as fodder.^[4]
6. A soft mass of crushed plant material, as the wood pulp used to make paper.^[1][22][17]
7. (anatomy) pulpa dentaria: the tissue inside a tooth, rich in nerves and blood vessels.^[4][11]
8. (Cuba) The pulp of tamarind made into a sweet paste; as an adjective, excellent.^[18][19]
9. (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua) The thick husk of the ripe coffee bean;^[23] (Chile) a concentrate of copper or another mineral in water.^[23]

Word family

• pulpejo
• pulpeta
• pulposo
• pulpero
• pulpería
• pulpetón

Related words

• Latin pulpa
• Portuguese polpa

Usage notes

In the Canaries pulpa is also the name of a reddish octopus, which some fishermen take for the female of the common octopus.^[24]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 688
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pulpa
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. pulpa
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. pulpa
6. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. pulpa
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. pulpa
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. pulpa
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. pulpa
12. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. pulpa
13. ^ a b c Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 402
14. ^ 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. 1236
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 430
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 715
17. ^ a b c Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. pulpa
18. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 686
19. ^ a b Suárez, Constantino (1921), Vocabulario cubano, La Habana: Librería Cervantes / Madrid: Perlado, Páez y Compañía, p. 433
20. ^ 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. pulpa
21. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 879
22. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pulpa
23. ^ 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. pulpa
24. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. pulpa