ruda

Forms

ruda f (plural rudas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rūta (“rue”).^[2][3][4][1] The word is common to all the western Romance languages: Portuguese arruda, Catalan ruda, French rue and Italian ruta, and Mozarabic ruta.^[2][5][6] The Portuguese form has the Arabic article fused with the noun, and Arabic writers already wrote the word with the article; a place called ⟨Arruta⟩ is recorded in 1172.^[7][8]

Wiktionary takes the Latin word from Ancient Greek ῥυτή (rhutḗ), which LSJ calls a Peloponnesian word for rue.^[1][9] The Greek word has no clear etymology;^[1] Beekes suggests it is Pre-Greek.^[1] Covarrubias, following Laguna, already derived the Latin and Spanish names from the old Greek name of the plant.^[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest records in the CDH are in the Moamín (1250), a treatise on hunting birds, which prescribes the seed of rue and of violets, and in Alfonso X's Lapidario, where a stone gives off a smell like that of wild rue, olor como de ruda montesina.^[12][13] A Gospel of the same years has the Pharisees tithing la mienta, e la ruda “mint and rue”.^[12] These antedate the DCECH's first record, a translation of Gower's Confessio Amantis of 1399.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Rue was valued as a medicine despite its strong smell.^[10] Covarrubias noted that it was so widely used that people said someone was más conocido que la ruda “better known than rue”, and repeated the belief that the weasel eats rue before fighting a snake.^[10] The Diccionario de Autoridades distinguished a garden and a wild kind and gave ruda de cabra as another name for goat's rue.^[11] The Academy's dictionary of 1843 calls it ruda cabruna and records the saying.^[14] In the Canaries ruda salvaje is a native species, Ruta pinnata.^[15] In Puerto Rico rue is used for baths and as an abortifacient.^[16]

Timeline

• 1250 – the seed of rue in the Moamín, the first record (in a copy of the later 13th century).^[12]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario compares a smell to that of ruda montesina “wild rue”.^[13]
• 1399 – a translation of Gower's Confessio Amantis, the DCECH's first record.^[2][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives ruda, ierva conocida “rue, a well-known herb”, with Latin ruta.^[17]
• 1571 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico City.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records más conocido que la ruda.^[10]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary records ruda cabruna and the saying.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin ruta.^[19]

Meanings

Noun

1. rue (Ruta graveolens), a perennial plant with divided bluish-green leaves, small yellow four-petalled flowers and a strong, unpleasant smell, used in medicine.^[4][1][20]

Related words

• rutáceo
• Latin rūta
• Portuguese arruda
• Catalan ruda

Usage notes

Ruda cabruna is galega, goat's rue.^[4][20] The colloquial phrase ser más conocido que la ruda means “to be very well known”.^[4] Ruda is also the feminine of the adjective rudo “rough, coarse”, which has a separate source, Latin rudis.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 82
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ruda
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. ruda
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. ruta
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7470
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. arruda
8. ^ Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. 318
9. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c d Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1273
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 650
12. ^ 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. ruda
13. ^ 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. ruda
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 645
15. ^ 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. ruda
16. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. ruda
17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 411
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. ruda
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 944
20. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ruda
21. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. ruda