tamarindo

Forms

tamarindo m (plural tamarindos)^[1] Medieval medical texts write tamarindios and tamarindio.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Arabic تمر هندي (tamr hindī, “Indian date”).^[3][4][5] Wiktionary calls Arabic the ultimate source, without naming an intermediate language.^[1] The first part is تمر (tamr, “dried dates”), and the second means “Indian”; the fruit was named after the date because the two look alike.^[4] Corriente, Pereira and Vicente call the word a modern loan of the 16th century, but the CDH has it in medical texts of the 15th century.^[5][2]

The same Arabic name gave Portuguese tamarinho, Catalan tamarinde, Italian tamarindo and French tamarin.^[6][5][7] García de Diego places it beside támara “date palm”, of the same Arabic origin.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The early records are medical: the fruit is a purgative named beside cassia and myrobalans.^[2] The glosses of Moses Arragel's Biblia de Alba (1422–1433, in a manuscript of the same years) mention tamarindios among the remedies a doctor prescribes.^[2]

Semantic evolution

For centuries the word named mainly the drug: Terreros describes the Indian tree and its sour pulp, and the Academy's dictionaries from 1817 call the fruit medicinal.^[7][8] In the Americas the word is recorded from 1625, and colonial lists of medicines from Venezuela and Mexico name it.^[9] In the Antilles it also named a native tree like the Asian one.^[10]

In colloquial Mexican Spanish a tamarindo is a traffic police officer, from the brown uniform.^[3][1] In El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua it is slang for a thief.^[3][11]

Timeline

• 13th century – DEMel cites an Aragonese customs tariff for the word, through a glossary.^[12]
• 1410 – the CDH dates Velasco de Taranto's treatise on the plague, which purges choler with tamarindos.^[2]
• 1422–1433 – the Biblia de Alba has tamarindios.^[2]
• 1494 – first record in DICCA-XV, which reports 1555 as the DCECH's date.^[13]
• 1625 – first record from the Americas.^[9]
• 1786–1793 – Terreros describes the tree and gives French tamarin and Latin tamarindus.^[7]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the Arabic etymology, “Indian date”.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. tamarind, the tropical tree Tamarindus indica, with compound leaves, yellowish flowers and pulpy pods.^[3][15][1]
2. The fruit of this tree, a pod with a sour-sweet pulp used in drinks, sweets and as a laxative: Compré pulpa de tamarindo para el agua fresca.^[3][16]
3. A sweet made of tamarind pulp.^[1]
4. (Mexico, colloquial) A traffic police officer.^[3][11]
5. (El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, slang) A thief (ladrón).^[3][11]

Related words

• támara
• Portuguese tamarinho

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. tamarindo
3. ^ a b c d e f g 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. tamarindo
4. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. tamarindo
5. ^ a b c Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. tamarinde
6. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. tamarindo
7. ^ a b c 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, 579
8. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 828
9. ^ 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. tamarindo
10. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. tamarindo
11. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. tamarindo
12. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. tamarindo
13. ^ 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. tamarindo
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1007
15. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tamarindo
16. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. tamarindo