salsera

Forms

salsera f (plural salseras)^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Spanish salsa + -era.^[1][2] Autoridades already says that the word was formed from the name of the sauce.^[3] salsa itself goes back to Latin salsa, the feminine of salsus (“salted”), from sāl (“salt”).^[2][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The form salsera occurs in a manuscript of 1385 of the Spanish translation of Palladius's Obra de agricultura.^[5] DICCA-XV records it in 15th-century texts and gives the CORDE's first date as 1400.^[2] The sense is clear in Nebrija (c. 1495), who glosses salsera o salsereta with Latin salsamentarium, a vessel for sauces.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th century it was a small dish, often listed with plates and bowls: a cargo list from Puerto Rico of 1513 has a dozen salceras, and Mexican texts of the 1570s give a Nahuatl name for such dishes and describe their glazing.^[7] Autoridades (1739) defined it as a small bowl into which sauce is put, quoting Antonio de Guevara, and the Academy kept that until the 1884 edition widened it to a vessel of any material and shape in which sauce is served.^[3][8] A small cup for mixing colours is a second sense; the DLE now lists both under salsero, whose feminine noun it is.^[9][1]

Timeline

• 1385 – the form appears in a manuscript of the Spanish Palladius.^[5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses salsera o salsereta.^[6]
• 1513 – a dozen salceras in a Puerto Rican list, the first record from the Americas.^[7]
• 1739 – Autoridades defines it as a small bowl for sauce.^[3]
• 1884 – the Academy defines it as a vessel of any shape in which sauce is served.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A sauceboat or sauce dish, a vessel for serving sauce at table: Pásame la salsera, por favor.^[9][1][10]
2. A small cup for mixing colours.^[9][1]

Word family

• salserilla
• salsereta

Related words

• salsa
• salsero
• sal

Usage notes

Older diminutives are salserilla and salsereta;^[8] Nebrija also gives salsereta as a dice cup.^[2][8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. salsera
3. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 28
4. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 130
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 413
7. ^ 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. salsera
8. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 954
9. ^ a b c 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. salsero
10. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. salsera