tango

Forms

tango m (plural tangos)^[1]

Etymology

Its origin is uncertain.^[2][3][1] Corominas notes that the word first appears outside Argentina: as the name of a dance of the island of El Hierro in the Canaries and, in other parts of the Americas, for a gathering of Black people dancing to a drum, and for the drum itself.^[2] He takes these as the original senses and considers the word probably onomatopoeic, like Middle French tangue, a dance of 16th-century Normandy, and German Tingeltangel (“café-concert”) (1872), which he thinks were formed in parallel but independently.^[2] The DLE also suggests, with a “perhaps”, an onomatopoeic origin.^[3]

Wiktionary and Etymonline instead consider an African, Niger-Congo source probable, and Etymonline compares Ibibio tamgu (“to dance”).^[1][4] Bénaben mentions an African ritual name or a word Igbo tamgu (“to dance”), and the Spanish Wiktionary a possible Kikongo origin.^[5][6] The 19th-century dictionaries of Echegaray and Barcia, and the Academy in 1899, derived the word from Latin tangō (“I touch”), a view that belongs to the name of a game (see Usage notes).^[7][8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cuban lexicographer Pichardo defined tango in 1836 as a gathering of newly arrived African slaves to dance to the sound of their drums.^[10][2] The Canarian historical dictionary has the dance of El Hierro from 1839, in Berthelot's account of a man who strummed the tango of his island on a guitar.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In 1843 the Academy's dictionary defined the word as a gathering and dance of Gypsies, and Domínguez (1846) called it an American song mixed with words of the slaves' speech, which had become popular among ordinary people.^[12][13] Salvá (1846) recorded it as a dance of newly arrived slaves in Cuba and a dance of the common people in Mexico.^[14] Alemany (1917) gave the American “party and dance of Black people or common folk” and “the music for this dance”.^[15]

The dance of the Río de la Plata, a couple dance in two-four time, grew up around Buenos Aires from about 1880 and spread throughout the world; the word also names its music and the lyrics sung to it.^[3][5] The English word tango dates from 1913, the year the dance became a craze in Britain and America.^[4] In Andalusian flamenco tango is a lively song and dance, said to have come from the Americas and most at home in Cádiz.^[16][3] Regional senses include a tantrum in Mexico, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic and a lie in Nicaraguan youth slang.^[17]

Timeline

• 1836 – Pichardo records tango in Cuba for a slaves' gathering and dance to drums.^[10][2]
• 1839 – Berthelot describes the tango of El Hierro in the Canaries.^[11]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary defines it as a gathering and dance of Gypsies.^[12]
• 1882 – the first record in the Americas in Boyd-Bowman's lexicon, from Puerto Rico.^[18]
• 1913 – English borrows tango for the dance.^[4]
• 1917 – Alemany records the American dance and its music.^[15]
• 1927 – Boyd-Bowman's first record from Buenos Aires.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. The tango: a couple dance of the Río de la Plata in two-four time, now known worldwide.^[3][1]
2. The music and lyrics of a tango: Gardel cantaba tangos de amores perdidos.^[3][1]
3. (Latin America) A party and dance of people of African origin or of the common people.^[3][19]
4. (flamenco) A style of flamenco song with verses of three or four eight-syllable lines.^[3]
5. (Honduras) A drum made from a hollow log with a hide stretched over one end.^[19]

Word family

• tanguear
• tanguista

Usage notes

The DLE has a separate tango for the game also called chito, in which players throw discs at a wooden cylinder; it derives this word from the old tango, the first person singular present of tañer “to touch”, because the player who hits the cylinder wins.^[3][19] That old verb form is found in Old Spanish, as in a document of 1320: tango con las mis manos “I touch with my hands”.^[20] García de Diego derives this tango “peg” instead from Vulgar Latin *tignicum, from Latin tignum (“beam, stick”).^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tango
3. ^ 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. tango
4. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. tango
6. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
7. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 444
8. ^ Barcia, Roque (1880–1883), Primer diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico de Álvarez Hermanos, p. 27
9. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 944
10. ^ a b Pichardo, Esteban (1836), Diccionario provincial de voces cubanas, Matanzas: Imprenta de la Real Marina, p. 242
11. ^ a b 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. tango
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 762
13. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 2, 1613
14. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 1031
15. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1557
16. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 594
17. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. tango
18. ^ 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. tango
19. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tango
20. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. tango
21. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6697