salvaje

Forms

salvaje m or f (masculine and feminine plural salvajes)^[1] Old Spanish wrote the word saluage, saluaie or salvage.^[2][3] DEMel also records the Catalan-looking form Saluatge.^[2][3] Covarrubias and the Diccionario de Autoridades still spell it salvage; the Academy writes salvaje by 1843.^[4][5][6]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Catalan salvatge, or Occitan salvatge, from Vulgar Latin salvāticus, an alteration of Latin silvāticus (“of the woods, wild”).^[7][8][9][1] The Academy's dictionary gave the Catalan and Provençal source in 2001 and now gives Catalan or Occitan, as Moliner and Vox do.^{[10][9][11][12]} Prat Sabater counts it among the 57 words for which the DCECH leaves open whether Catalan or Occitan passed them to Spanish.^[13]

The Latin adjective is formed from silva (“forest, wood”) with the suffix -āticus.^[14][15][1] The first ⟨i⟩ became ⟨a⟩ by assimilation to the stressed /a/ of the next syllable, which gave the Late Latin form.^[14][16] De Vaan gives no etymology for the Latin noun.^[17]

The same Latin word is French sauvage, Italian salvatico, Romanian sălbatic and Galician salvaxe.^[18][16] Spanish later took the variant selvático from Italian selvatico: the DCECH finds it in the 15th century, and Fernández de Oviedo still treated it as a typical Italian word in the 16th.^[7][8] A blend of the two forms, or the influence of selva, gave selvaje, recorded in 1616.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest hit, the Libro de los doce sabios (c. 1237), survives only in a copy of about 1400, where a man ruled by anger is called bestia salvaje “a wild beast”.^[3] Texts of about 1250 without a later copy use it of animals: the Aragonese Vidal Mayor names a mulo saluage, glossed as a male zebra, and a cabrón saluage, and Herman the German's Psalter compares enemies to bestias saluages.^[3] The DCECH's first records are in Alfonso X's General Estoria and in Juan Ruiz, and the BDELC dates the word 1335.^[7][8]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose already has the main senses: plants that grow wild, animals that are not tame, rough uncultivated land, and fierce people; the General Estoria explains siluestre as saluage, “of the woods”.^[19] Nebrija gave Latin siluestris and soliuagus for it.^[20]

In 1611 Covarrubias described the hairy wild men of the books of chivalry, and used the word for a peasant with few manners; he derived it from selva.^[4] The Diccionario de Autoridades also has it as an insult, “very foolish, stubborn, coarse”, and as a noun for a man raised in the woods among wild beasts, the figure of architecture and painting.^[5] In 1843 the Academy defined the noun as a native of lands without culture or government.^[6] From the 1530s the word was applied in the Americas to the native peoples, as in indios salvajes in Mexico in 1532.^[21]

Modern colloquial senses are “cruel” and “uncontrolled”, as in huelga salvaje “wildcat strike”.^[9][10] In Honduras and Nicaragua it can mean “great, tremendous”, and in Paraguay a shy person.^[22] In Puerto Rico it is a child's marble.^[23]

Timeline

• 1145 – DEMel's earliest item is the form Saluatge in documents of the reconquest of the Ebro valley.^[2]
• c. 1237 – bestia salvaje in the Libro de los doce sabios, known from a copy of about 1400.^[3]
• c. 1250 – saluage in the Vidal Mayor and in the Poridat de las poridades.^[3]
• 1272–1275 – the General Estoria uses it of plants, land and fierce people.^[19][7]
• 1335 – the BDELC's date of first record.^[8]
• 1532 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico: indios salvajes que comen yerbas.^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the wild men of the books of chivalry.^[4]
• 1616 – the blended form selvaje.^[7]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology, from Latin silvaticus.^[24]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a plant: growing wild, not cultivated (cultivado): En la ladera crece tomillo salvaje.^[9][11]
2. Of an animal: not domesticated (domesticado).^[9][1]
3. Of an animal: fierce (feroz).^[9]
4. Of land: mountainous, rough and uncultivated.^[9][11]
5. Of people: primitive (primitivo), uncivilized; also as a noun, “a savage” (now often offensive).^[9][1]
6. Lacking manners or heedless of social rules; also as a noun: Se portaron como unos salvajes en la fiesta.^[9][11]
7. (colloquial) Cruel (cruel), inhuman.^[9]
8. (colloquial) Of an attitude or situation: uncontrolled, as in huelga salvaje “wildcat strike”.^[9]
9. (Honduras, Nicaragua) Great, tremendous, wonderful.^[22]

Word family

• salvajada
• salvajería
• salvajina
• salvajismo

Related words

• selva
• selvático
• silvestre
• Latin silvāticus
• French sauvage

Usage notes

The variant selvático, taken from Italian, is a separate word meaning “of the forest” and “rustic”.^[7][8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. salvaje
3. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. salvaje
4. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1282
5. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 33
6. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 653
7. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 196
8. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. selva
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. salvaje
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. salvaje
11. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. salvaje
12. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. salvaje
13. ^ Prat Sabater, Marta (2003), Préstamos del catalán en el léxico español, doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, p. 33
14. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 628
15. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. silvāticus
16. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. sauvage
17. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
18. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 711
19. ^ 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. salvaje
20. ^ 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. salvaje
21. ^ 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. salvaje
22. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. salvaje
23. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. salvaje
24. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 955