sudor

Forms

sudor m (plural sudores)^[1] Old Spanish had both suor, the popular form, and sudor: Berceo's Milagros has suor, and the Alfonsine texts write suor.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sudor (“sweat”).^[5][2][1] The inherited form was Old Spanish suor, with the loss of the Latin /d/ between vowels, as in Portuguese suor and Galician suor; the modern form kept or restored the /d/ under the influence of the Latin word, and in time replaced the popular one.^[1][6] García de Diego calls it a learned word, and Autoridades already called it “purely Latin”.^[6][7]

The same Latin word is Catalan suor, French sueur, Italian sudore and Romanian sudoare.^[8]

The Latin noun belongs with sūdō (“to sweat”).^[9] It goes back to Proto-Italic *swoidōs and the root Proto-Indo-European *sweyd- (“to sweat”), and its cognates include Ancient Greek ἱδρώς (hidrṓs, “sweat”), Old High German sweiz and Old English swāt, the source of English sweat.^[10][1] De Vaan explains the Latin vowel either by a sound change of ⟨swei-⟩ to ⟨swoi-⟩ or by the o-grade of the verb carried into the noun.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is Berceo.^[2][11] The CDH has a slightly earlier text, the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250), where it means the fruit of one's labour: todo lo que gane de mi sudor “all that I earned by my sweat”.^[12] Its earliest hit, of 1218, is a Latin word in a Latin charter, not the noun.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The sense “toil, hard work” is as old as the word, and the Alfonsine texts use suor both for sweat and for drops oozing from damp things.^[3][12] Autoridades defines it as the moisture that leaves the body through the pores, and adds the figurative “labour and fatigue” and the gums that trees exude.^[7] From 1843 the Academy recorded the plural sudores for a sweating cure, especially for syphilis, a sense the DLE now marks as obsolete.^[13][5] In Colombia sudor is a hot drink that makes the patient sweat, and in Cuba a sudorific potion.^[14][2]

Timeline

• 1218–c. 1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes has mi sudor “my labour”.^[12]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo, Corominas's first record; the Milagros also have suor.^[2][11]
• 1250–1279 – the Lapidario of Alfonso X writes suor.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin sudor and mador.^[15]
• 1545 – first record in the Americas, in Chile, for hard labour.^[16]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades calls the word purely Latin.^[7]
• 1843 – the Academy adds the plural sense “sweating cure”.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. sweat: the clear liquid given off by the sweat glands of the skin: Tenía la camisa empapada de sudor.^[5][1]
2. The sap or juice that plants exude.^[5]
3. Drops that ooze from rocks or other damp things.^[5][17]
4. toil, hard work and fatigue, often in the plural: Aquella casa le costó muchos sudores.^[5][17]
5. (Colombia, colloquial) A sudorific (sudorífico); a hot drink taken to bring on sweating.^[5][14]
6. (obsolete, in the plural) A sweating cure, especially for venereal disease.^[5]

Word family

• sudoroso
• sudoriento

Related words

• sudar
• sudario
• sudorífico
• sudoríparo
• Latin sudor
• Portuguese suor

Usage notes

Con el sudor de su frente “by the sweat of one's brow” is said of what one earns by one's own work.^[17] Sudor frío is a cold sweat.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 325
3. ^ a b c 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. sudor
4. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. sudor
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. sudor
6. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6453
7. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 175
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sucotrino
12. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. sudor
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 680
14. ^ 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. sudor
15. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 419
16. ^ 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. sudor
17. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sudor