suelo

Forms

suelo m (plural suelos)^[1] Old Spanish wrote suelo and suello;^[2][3] Leonese charters have solo and solos, the first in 1191.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish suelo, inherited from Latin solum (“base, bottom; ground; the land one lives in”).^[4][5][6][1] The Latin word had a short ⟨ŏ⟩.^[7][8]

The same word is Portuguese solo, Galician solo, Catalan sòl, Italian suolo and Romanian sol.^[9][1][10] The Catalan word is first recorded in Roussillon charters from 1149, for a piece of land.^[10] French sol was taken from Latin in 1538, after the inherited forms Old French suel and Middle French soul.^[11]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *solo- (“base, sole”) and Proto-Indo-European *solo- (“place, habitation”), with cognates such as Lithuanian salà (“island; village”), Old Church Slavonic село (selo, “field, village”) and Old High German sal (“dwelling, room”).^[12][1] Since a root with /e/ would give the same Latin form, he leaves open whether it had /e/ or /o/.^[12] De Vaan lists solea (“sandal”) among its derivatives; suela comes from Vulgar Latin *sola, which replaced it.^[12][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy): a palace is hung with cloth por el suelo e suso “on the floor and above”.^[4][13] In 13th-century charters a suelo is also a plot of land or a building site, and the 1208 Cortes of León use it for a person's home estate.^[13][14]

Semantic evolution

The main senses are very frequent from the oldest texts on.^[4] Alfonso X's prose has “the surface of the earth”, “the underside of something”, “the site of a building” and “a base”.^[14] Corominas notes “underside of an object” in an Aragonese inventory of 1378 and “bottom” in Sem Tob, and Nebrija lists floors of rammed earth, brick, tile and mosaic.^[4]

Covarrubias in 1611 recorded the bottom of a vessel, pozo sin suelo “a bottomless well”, dar con la cosa en el suelo “to ruin it”, and the sense “the earth, as against heaven”.^[15] Autoridades added the sediment that a liquid leaves.^[16] Terreros also recorded the sense “soil”, the earth in which crops are sown.^[17] The modern dictionary adds the national territory, the soil of agriculture and the floor exercise of gymnastics.^[6]

For the floor of a body cavity, the DTME notes, Spain prefers suelo where Latin America says piso.^[18]

Timeline

• 1056 – first record of the derivative solar “plot, site”.^[4][5]
• c. 1140 – suelo “floor” in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[4][13]
• 1191 – the Leonese form solos in a charter of Carrizo.^[2]
• 1208 – suelo in the acts of the Cortes of León, the first record with no later copy.^[13]
• 1335 – first record of suela “sole”.^[5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin solum and lists kinds of floor.^[19][4]
• 1533 – first record from the Americas, in Panama.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records pozo sin suelo.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology solum.^[21]

Meanings

Noun

1. The ground, the surface of the earth: Se sentaron en el suelo a descansar.^[6][1]
2. The floor of a room or building, or its paving: El suelo de la cocina es de baldosa.^[6][1]
3. The underside or bottom of something, such as a vessel.^[6]
4. The sediment that a liquid leaves at the bottom.^[6]
5. The site of a building; land as a building plot.^[6]
6. territory, the land of a nation or region: el suelo patrio.^[6]
7. The earth or world, as against heaven.^[6][15]
8. (agriculture) soil: the organic and mineral matter at the surface of the earth that supports plants.^[6][1]
9. (sport) Floor exercise in artistic gymnastics.^[6]

Word family

• solar
• solera
• solero
• entresuelo
• subsuelo
• solado

Related words

• suela
• asolar
• sollado
• Latin solum
• Portuguese solo
• Italian suolo

Usage notes

Set phrases include santo suelo “the bare ground”, suelo natal “native land” and por los suelos “very low, in a sorry state”.^[6][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. suelo
3. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. s.v. suelo
4. ^ 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, 326
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. suelo
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. suelo
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
10. ^ a b Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 8, 28
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
12. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ 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. suelo
14. ^ 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. suelo
15. ^ 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. 1310
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 176
17. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 3, 545
18. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. suelo
19. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 419
20. ^ 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. suelo
21. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 995