rabo

Forms

rabo m (plural rabos)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish rabo, probably inherited from Latin rāpum (“turnip”).^[2][3][4][1] The idea goes back to Mahn, who compared the turnip pulled out of the ground, with its tuft of leaves at the end, to a hairy tail;^[5] Nigra, Antoine Thomas, the Academy and Meyer-Lübke accepted it, and Corominas expects the acceptance to be final.^[2][5] Diez had derived the word from rapiō (“to seize, carry off”), through an idea of dragging, which Corominas rejects because dragging is only incidental to the Latin verb.^[2] Corominas supports the comparison with other names for the tail taken from the turnip: German Rübe (“turnip”) names the fleshy stump of a horse's tail, Old Norse rófa the bony part of it, and Spanish nabo also means the stump of the tail of horses and mules.^[2][3]

As a name for the tail the word is strictly Hispano-Portuguese: it is also Portuguese rabo, where it has replaced the older word for the tail, Galician rabo and Asturian rabu.^[2][6] In Valencian it is a borrowing from Castilian, though long established.^[2]

The Latin word goes back to *rāpom.^[1] It has cognates in Ancient Greek ῥάπυς (rhápus, “turnip”), Lithuanian rópė (“turnip”) and Old High German ruoba (“turnip”), but de Vaan holds that it cannot be a regular Indo-European word, since the vowels of these forms do not match, and suggests a loanword.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest record in the CDH is in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy), where God tells Moses to pick up the serpent: tiende tu mano e prentle del rabo “stretch out your hand and take it by the tail”.^[8][9] Corominas's first record is in Berceo, and his short dictionary dates the word 1220–1250.^[2][3] In Berceo it is the tail of a bird: the wicked men were not worth sendos rabos de malos gavilanes “a tail apiece of wretched sparrowhawks”.^[10][8]

Semantic evolution

The word has been in general use from the beginning.^[2] Early fueros punished a man who lent his horse to escape military service by cutting off the horse's tail, and the Moamín, a hunting treatise of Alfonso X's court, describes the tails of good animals.^[8][11] Nebrija gave three senses about 1495: the tail of an animal, the train of a garment, and the backside.^[2][12]

The Diccionario de Autoridades called it the same as cola but used more narrowly, above all for the tails of certain animals, and by likeness for anything hanging behind, such as the rag pinned on someone as a joke at Carnival; it reports that Covarrubias derived it from Latin repere “to crawl”.^[13] The Academy first gave the Latin rapum as its source in 1884.^[14] Later senses include the stalk of a leaf, flower or fruit, the penis (vulgar), and in much of Spanish America the buttocks.^[4][15][16] The phrase hacer la rabona “to play truant” means literally to turn one's tail on the school.^[2][3]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar has prentle del rabo “take it by the tail”.^[8]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo uses the word; this is Corominas's first record.^[2][3]
• c. 1400 – the derivative rabear “to wag the tail” is recorded.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives the senses “tail”, “train of a garment” and “backside”, and the derivatives rabadilla and derrabar.^[2][3]
• 1551 – in Santo Domingo a tropical seabird is named rabo de junco for its long, thin tail.^[17]
• 1611 – rabón “short-tailed” is first recorded, in Covarrubias.^[3][2]
• 1737 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the word with raboso and rabudo.^[13][3]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first derives it from Latin rapum.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. tail of an animal, especially a land animal: El gato movía el rabo despacio.^[4][15][1]
2. (botany) The stalk of a leaf, flower or fruit.^[4][15][1]
3. The part of wheat or other grain left after winnowing or sieving.^[4]
4. (colloquial) Anything that hangs down like an animal's tail.^[4]
5. (colloquial) A rag or other thing pinned to the back of someone's clothes as a joke.^[4][15]
6. (vulgar) The penis.^[4][1]
7. (Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela; colloquial) The buttocks.^[4][16][1]
8. (Costa Rica, Puerto Rico) A person who likes to follow others about.^[4][16]

Word family

• rabada
• rabear
• rabera
• rabil
• rabillo
• rabón
• raboso
• rabudo
• derrabar
• rabiza
• rabihorcado
• rabilargo
• taparrabos
• rabadilla
• rabicano
• raposa

Related words

• Latin rāpum
• Portuguese rabo

Usage notes

Rabo is more popular and expressive than cola: it is used above all for the fleshy tail of dogs, cats or horses, while cola serves for birds, fish and lizards and for the figurative senses, such as a queue of people or the tail of a comet.^[2][18] Corominas explains this by the comparison with the turnip: rabo was the fleshy part of a horse's tail, cola the hairy part.^[3]

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 Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 744
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. rabo
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. rabo
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7065
6. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. rabu
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. ^ 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. rabo
9. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. rabo
10. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 633
11. ^ 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. rabo
12. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 405
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 479
14. ^ 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. 893
15. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. rabo
16. ^ 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. rabo
17. ^ 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. rabo
18. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. rabo