serpiente

Forms

serpiente f (plural serpientes)^[1] Old Spanish had serpient beside serpiente, and rarer spellings such as sirpientes and syrpientes.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish serpiente, inherited from Latin serpēns (“snake, serpent”).^[1][4][5][6] Corominas thinks it was rather a semi-learned word than a fully popular one, since it was always a literary word, the everyday name being culebra.^[4] The DHLE calls it a word taken from Latin.^[3] In Latin the noun was itself a replacement, “the creeping one”, used to avoid the older name anguis.^[4][7]

The Latin noun is the present participle of serpō (“to creep, crawl”), from Proto-Italic *serpō and Proto-Indo-European *serp- (“to creep”), with cognates in Sanskrit सर्प (sarpá, “snake”) and Ancient Greek ἕρπω (hérpō, “to creep”).^[8][1] In Vulgar Latin the nominative was pronounced as Vulgar Latin *serpes, which was taken for a feminine noun and gave the popular doublet sierpe, beside Italian serpe, Catalan serp and Romanian șarpe.^[4][9] The forms that continue the full stem are Portuguese serpente, Catalan serpent, French serpent and Italian serpente.^[9][10] The Latin noun was masculine or feminine.^[4] Spanish made it feminine, probably under the influence of the everyday word for “snake”.^[4][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is serpient in the Liber Regum (c. 1194–1211), in a manuscript of the first quarter of the 13th century, for the bronze serpent that Moses made and King Hezekiah destroyed: crebanto la serpient d'aramne que fizo Moysen.^[11][3] The usual sense, the reptile, is first in the Semejanza del mundo (c. 1223), of a beast that hisses como serpiente.^[11][3] Corominas dates the word from Berceo, who calls the Virgin the pole on which the serpent was raised.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word meant both the animal and its religious figure: the DHLE records the devil, the fallen angel, from c. 1275 in Alfonso X's General Estoria, where the devil speaks to Eve en figura de serpiente.^[3][12] Alfonso's astronomy also names the constellation serpiente.^[12] Covarrubias (1611) says the word was used for a kind of snake imagined with wings and great claws, and explains it from Latin serpendo, because snakes crawl along the ground.^[13] From 1817 to 1869 the Academy applied it to large and fierce snakes, and to monstrous ones of fable.^[14][15] From 1884 it defined it as culebra, usually a big one.^[16]

The word stayed bookish, and culebra remained the everyday name;^[4] Corominas notes that in Lima serpiente is used because culebra became taboo there.^[4] In Honduras a serpiente is a servile flatterer.^[17] The doublet sierpe survives in the name of Seville's Calle de las Sierpes and in dialects.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1194–1211 – serpient in the Liber Regum, for Moses's bronze serpent.^[3][11]
• c. 1223 – the Semejanza del mundo, the first record of the reptile.^[3][11]
• c. 1230 – Berceo's Vida de San Millán has serpientes e culuebras.^[11][4]
• c. 1275 – Alfonso X's General Estoria uses it for the devil.^[3]
• 1277 – Alfonso X's astronomical works name the constellation.^[12]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia's Universal vocabulario is the first dictionary to record it.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: serpiente generalmente, Latin serpens.^[18]
• 1546 – the first record from the Americas, for the island of Gorgona, named after its many snakes.^[19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the serpent as a winged snake with claws.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the constellation and serpiente de cascabel.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A snake or serpent, a legless ophidian reptile with a long round body and scaly skin that it sheds; especially a large one.^[6][1][20]
2. The devil, as tempter: la serpiente.^[6][20]
3. (figurative) A treacherous person.^[1][3]
4. (astronomy) Serpens, a northern constellation beside Ophiuchus.^[16][12]
5. (Honduras, derogatory) A servile flatterer.^[17]

Word family

• serpentear
• serpentario
• serpentín
• serpentina
• serpentino

Related words

• sierpe
• culebra
• Latin serpēns
• English serpent

Usage notes

Serpiente de cascabel is the rattlesnake and serpiente de anteojos the cobra.^[6][20] In everyday Spanish culebra is the common word, and serpiente is used above all for large or venomous snakes.^[4][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. serpiente
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Real Academia Española (2013–), Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (DHLE), https://www.rae.es/dhle, p. s.v. serpiente
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 227
5. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. serpiente
6. ^ 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. serpiente
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. serpiente
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7855
10. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6079
11. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. serpiente
12. ^ a b c d 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. serpiente
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. 1295
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 798
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 710
16. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 971
17. ^ 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. serpiente
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 415
19. ^ 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. serpiente
20. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. serpiente
21. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. serpiente