reuma

Forms

reuma m or f same meaning (plural reumas)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin rheuma (“flow; catarrh”), a learned word.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin word is from Ancient Greek ῥεῦμα (rheûma, “flow, stream; catarrh”), a noun formed from the verb ῥέω (rhéō, “to flow”).^[2][3][5] The verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *srew- (“to flow, stream”).^[1] In Latin the word meant both a flood of the sea and a catarrh.^[6]

García de Diego records popular forms of the same Latin word, Navarrese ruma (“catarrh”) and an old Castilian rema, beside the learned form.^[7] The same Latin noun is French rhume, Italian reuma and Portuguese reuma.^[8] The Old Spanish verb romadizarse (“to catch a cold”) and the noun romadizo come semi-learnedly from the derived Late Latin verb rheumatizare.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Alfonso X's Libro de las formas y de las ymágines (1276–1279) has the word in a list of a stone's virtues: pora sanar dolor delos oios de laganna o de reuma “to heal pain of the eyes from bleariness or from rheum”.^[9][10] It meant a flow of humours to any part of the body.^[9] The CDH dates the Libro de los caballos c. 1275, with la sangre & la reuma “the blood and the rheum” that must not run down into the weak limbs, but the HSMS dates its manuscript to the 14th century.^[10][11] Corominas found the word no earlier than 1555, in Laguna.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Medieval and Golden Age medicine used reuma for a flux of humours, a catarrh or a cold: a late 14th-century translation of Palladius speaks of rreuma that causes a cough, and texts from 16th-century Mexico say that a plant root haze correr las reumas “makes the rheums run”.^[10][12] For Covarrubias in 1611 it was a synonym of corrimiento “flux”, named after the Greek verb meaning “to flow”.^[13] Terreros described it as a medical term for a discharge that falls on various parts of the body.^[14]

In the 19th century the word came to mean rheumatism: the Academy's dictionary of 1843 made reuma a masculine synonym of reumatismo, adding that it had formerly been feminine and meant a cold (romadizo).^[15] The 1884 edition kept both genders apart: masculine for rheumatism, feminine for a flux of humours.^[16] Today the DLE gives only the sense “rheumatism”, as a masculine or feminine noun, mostly masculine.^[4]

Timeline

• 1276–1279 – Alfonso X's Libro de las formas y de las ymágines names reuma among eye ailments.^[9][11]
• 1380–1385 – Ferrer Sayol's translation of Palladius writes rreuma for a flux that causes a cough.^[10]
• 1528 – the first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo: a liquor drunk with fennel water against a flux of rheum.^[12]
• 1555 – Laguna uses the word; this is the DCECH's first record.^[2][3]
• 1591 – Percyvall glosses it in English as “the rheume”.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias equates it with corrimiento.^[13]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary defines the masculine noun as rheumatism.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology and separates the masculine “rheumatism” from the feminine “flux”.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. (pathology) rheumatism: pain in the joints or muscles, sometimes with swelling; masculine or, less often, feminine: El reuma no le deja subir las escaleras.^[4][18][1]
2. (Panama, rural) Chronic rhinitis.^[19]

Word family

• reumático
• reumatismo

Related words

• romadizo
• Latin rheuma
• French rhume

Usage notes

Reuma is used in both genders, mostly as a masculine noun (el reuma).^[4][18] The older feminine survives in Latin America: Batres noted in Guatemala that people said una reuma while Spain said el reuma.^[20] Moliner also gives the stress reúma, and Mexican popular speech has riúma.^[18][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 488
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. reuma
4. ^ a b c d 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. reuma
5. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. rheuma
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7288
9. ^ 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. reuma
10. ^ 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. reuma
11. ^ a b 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, p. s.v. reuma
12. ^ a b 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. reuma
13. ^ 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. 1264
14. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 3, 370
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 636
16. ^ 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. 931
17. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 207
18. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. reuma
19. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. reuma
20. ^ Batres Jáuregui, Antonio (1892), Vicios del lenguaje y provincialismos de Guatemala, Guatemala: Encuadernación y Tipografía Nacional, p. 496
21. ^ Henríquez Ureña, Pedro (2015), Obras completas, vol. 12: 1936–1940 III, ed. Miguel D. Mena, Santo Domingo: Ministerio de Cultura, p. 138