roque

Forms

roque m (plural roques)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Andalusian Arabic رخ (rúḫḫ, “rook”), from the Classical Arabic word رُخّ (ruḵḵ), which came from the Persian رخ (roḵḵ) and ultimately from the Pahlavi rah (“war chariot”).^[2][3][1] Corominas gives the original sense of the Arabic word as “chariot”.^[4][5] He rejects the older view that the chess name was a transferred use of the name of the fabulous bird rokh (Spanish rocho), which Dozy had already shown to be false.^[4] Corriente, Pereira and Vicente instead derive the bird's name from the same word, through a metonymy they find already in Pahlavi.^[3]

Corominas notes that the Arabic /ḫ/ is written with ⟨q⟩, which suggests that the word did not pass straight from Arabic into Castilian but came through Medieval Latin or another Romance language; he thinks Neuvonen wrong to see an old Castilian transcription in it.^[4] The same chess word is Catalan roc, Portuguese roque, Galician roque, Italian rocca and French roc.^[3]

Older explanations linked the piece with a rock or fortress: Covarrubias saw in it the fortress built on the enemy's border, and the Diccionario de Autoridades reports that some derived it from roca and others, after Bluteau, from a Persian word for a knight errant.^[6][7] Eguílaz quotes Forbes, who related the piece to a Sanskrit word for a boat.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Alfonso X's book of chess, dice and board games of 1283, which describes two pieces that are alike: & llamanlos Roques “and they call them rooks”.^[9][10] Corominas dates the book 1288.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The sense “two-wheeled cart”, which keeps the meaning of the Persian and Pahlavi word, is now obsolete.^[2] Salvá and Alemany marked it as old.^[2][11][12] Corriente, Pereira and Vicente note that the original sense “chariot” sometimes shows through in Old Castilian, and Eguílaz quotes the Fuero Juzgo on Elijah raised to heaven en un roque de fuego “in a chariot of fire”.^[3][8]

The phrase ni rey ni roque “neither king nor rook”, that is “nobody at all”, appears in Yucatán in 1563 and in Cervantes's Quijote; the Diccionario de Autoridades explains it as a way of excluding every kind of person.^[13][14][7] Terreros adds a sense in heraldry, the chess piece shown on a coat of arms.^[15] The Academy's 1899 edition defines the word by torre, the name chess players use today, and the DLE still does.^[16][2][17]

Timeline

• 1283 – Alfonso X's book of chess calls two of the pieces Roques.^[9][10]
• c. 1414 – the Castilian translation of the Lanzarote del Lago mentions the rooks in a game of chess.^[9]
• 1563 – the phrase ni rey ni roque is recorded in Yucatán.^[13]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains the piece as a fortress on the enemy's border.^[6]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades describes the rook's move and the phrase ni rey ni roque.^[7]
• 1786–1793 – Terreros records the heraldic sense.^[15]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary gives a Persian etymology, “war chariot, rook”.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. (chess) The rook, also called torre: Movió el roque hasta la última fila.^[2][1][17]
2. (obsolete) A two-wheeled cart with a shaft or poles.^[2][18]

Word family

• enrocar
• enroque

Related words

• torre
• Catalan roc
• Portuguese roque

Usage notes

The DLE has a separate adjective roque “asleep”, colloquial and used in estar roque and quedarse roque “to be fast asleep, to drop off”, for which it gives no etymology.^[2][17] Vox marks it as Spanish of Spain, and Alcalá Venceslada recorded it in Andalusia.^[17][19] In the Canary Islands roque is a steep rocky height, a tall reef or a rocky islet, recorded on Tenerife in 1497.^[20][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. roque
3. ^ a b c d Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. roc
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 49
5. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. roque
6. ^ 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. 1268
7. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 642
8. ^ a b Eguílaz y Yanguas, Leopoldo de (1886), Glosario etimológico de las palabras españolas (castellanas, catalanas, gallegas, mallorquinas, portuguesas, valencianas y bascongadas) de origen oriental, Granada: La Lealtad, p. 509
9. ^ 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. roque
10. ^ a b 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. roque
11. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 963
12. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1467
13. ^ 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. roque
14. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 988
15. ^ a b 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, 395
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 882
17. ^ a b c d Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. roque
18. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. roque
19. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 555
20. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. roque
21. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. roque