suegro

Forms

suegro m (plural suegros, feminine suegra, feminine plural suegras)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote sogro and sogra, socro and ssuegro.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish suegro, inherited from Late Latin socrus (“father-in-law”).^[1] The feminine suegra is socra (“mother-in-law”), which replaced classical socrus, a feminine of the fourth declension, because its ending marked it clearly as a woman's name.^[3][4][5] The masculine did not come from classical socer (“father-in-law”): a masculine of the same form as the classical feminine, found in some glossaries, was made from the Vulgar Latin feminine, which was the more common word, since the mother-in-law played the larger part in family life.^[3][4] The DLE derives the feminine from the Vulgar Latin form, and its 2001 edition the masculine from the classical one.^[6][7]

The same pair is Portuguese sogro and sogra, Galician sogro, Asturian suegru, Catalan sogre and sogra, and Mozarabic xocro.^[8][9][1] Italian suocero and some Italian dialects go back instead to longer Latin forms with the vowel kept before /r/.^[3][10]

The Latin words continue *swekuros (“father-in-law”) and *swekrus (“mother-in-law”), from *swéḱuros and *sweḱrúh₂.^[11][1] Their cognates include Ancient Greek ἑκυρός (hekurós, “father-in-law”) and Old High German swehur and swigar (“mother-in-law”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates suegra from a charter of 1156 in Oelschläger's list, which also has the half-Latin forms socra (1030) and sogra (1148); the masculine appears in charters of the 12th and 13th centuries.^[3][4] The DEMel has sogro and sogra in documents from Nájera of 1124.^[2] Alfonso X's Estoria de España (1270–1284) uses suegro of Caesar and Pompey, who were father-in-law and son-in-law.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija in 1495 glossed suegro as the wife's father, and Percyvall in 1591 gave both socer and socrus.^[13][14] The Diccionario de Autoridades treated the masculine and feminine together, as the dictionaries have done since.^[15] The Academy's 1817 edition has a regional sense of suegra, the thin, well-baked ends where a ring of bread is joined, and the proverb suegra, ni aun de azúcar es buena, for the strife between mothers-in-law and their sons' and daughters' spouses.^[16][17] In the Canary Islands suegra is also the pad worn on the head to carry loads, a sense taken from Portuguese sogra and added to the Academy's dictionary in 1970.^[18]

Timeline

• 1124 – sogro and sogra in documents from Nájera.^[2]
• 1156 – suegra in a charter, the DCECH's first record.^[3][4]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España calls Caesar and Pompey suegro e yerno.^[12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin socer for suegro.^[13]
• 1543 – first record from the Americas, in Panama.^[19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines suegro as the wife's father.^[20]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades has suegro, gra as one entry.^[15]
• 1970 – the Academy adds the Canarian suegra “head pad”.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. (masculine) father-in-law, the father of one's spouse;^[1] (feminine, suegra) mother-in-law, the mother of one's spouse: Mi suegra vive con nosotros desde el verano.^[6][1]
2. (masculine plural) One's parents-in-law, the father and mother of one's spouse.^[6][7]
3. (feminine, suegra) The thin, well-baked part of a ring-shaped loaf where the two ends of the dough meet.^[6]
4. (feminine, suegra, Canary Islands) A pad worn on the head for carrying loads.^[6][18]

Word family

• consuegro

Related words

• yerno
• nuera
• Latin socer
• Portuguese sogro

Usage notes

Lo que ve la suegra is a colloquial phrase for cleaning a house only where it shows.^[6] The proverb suegra, ni aun de azúcar es buena is in the Academy's dictionaries of the 19th century.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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. suegro
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. suegra
5. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. suegra
6. ^ a b c d e f 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. suegro
7. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. suegro
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 6203
9. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. sogra
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. socer
11. ^ 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, p. s.v. socer
12. ^ 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. suegro
13. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 419
14. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 176
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 818
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 680
18. ^ a b c 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. suegra
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. suegro
20. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1310