tiro

Forms

tiro m (plural tiros, diminutive tirito)^[1]

Etymology

It is a deverbal noun from Spanish tirar (“to throw, shoot, pull”).^[2][3][4][5] A noun of the same kind, French tir, is recorded in French from the 13th century.^[2]

The origin of the verb is one of the most obscure problems of Romance etymology: the word is old in all the western Romance languages, but its source is unknown.^[2][6] Diez derived it from Proto-Germanic *teran (“to tear apart”), which Corominas thinks unlikely for reasons of meaning and form.^[2] Corominas suggests instead that it arose in the slang of the Roman legions from the Parthian name of the arrow, a word preserved in Middle and Modern Persian, Kurdish and Baluchi.^[2] Wiktionary reconstructs Vulgar Latin *tīrāre.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

DICCA-XV, the dictionary of 15th-century Castilian of the Crown of Aragon, dates its first record 1460–1463.^[7] Corominas first finds the noun in Alfonso de Palencia's Universal vocabulario of 1490, and Nebrija glosses it as “that which is thrown”, Latin telum and iaculum.^[2][3][8] Percyvall in 1591 translates it as “a cast, a dart”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The noun followed the senses of the verb: the throw, the missile, the shot, then the gun itself.^[10][11] Covarrubias in 1611 defines it as the blow struck with a ball, arrow or stone, and also as the piece of artillery and as a malicious trick played on someone; he records tiro de piedra “a stone's throw” for a short distance.^[10] Autoridades adds the mark left by what is thrown, the charge of a gun, a theft and a serious injury.^[11]

The Academy's 1817 edition adds the team of six or seven mules or horses, the builder's rope on a pulley, the trace of a carriage and, among tailors, the width of a garment from shoulder to shoulder.^[12] The 1869 edition adds the report of a gun and the flight of a staircase, the 1899 edition the shooting range, and the draught of a fireplace is in Alemany's dictionary of 1917.^[13][14][15]

In much of Latin America al tiro means “at once”, and in Mexico de a tiro means “completely”.^[16] The word also names a marble in Chile, Mexico and Peru, and a trail for dragging timber in Honduras.^[16] In Judeo-Spanish it was the cannonball.^[17]

Timeline

• 1460–1463 – the earliest record in DICCA-XV's corpus of 15th-century Castilian of the Crown of Aragon.^[7]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia's Universal vocabulario has the noun.^[2][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses tiro as “that which is thrown”.^[8]
• 1515 – first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico, in a list of supplies: 100 docenas de tiros.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the piece of artillery and the trick.^[10]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades adds “theft” and “serious harm”.^[11]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary has the team of mules and the carriage trace.^[12]
• 1817 – first record of the derivatives tirotear and tiroteo.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of throwing or shooting; a throw.^[19][1]
2. The mark left by something thrown.^[19]
3. A shot from a firearm, and the report it makes: Se oyeron dos tiros en la calle.^[19][1]
4. The charge of a firearm.^[19]
5. The range of a missile weapon.^[19][1]
6. A shooting range, and (sport) the sport of shooting at a target.^[19][20]
7. (sport) A shot at goal.^[1]
8. A team of draught animals pulling a carriage; a carriage trace (tirante).^[19][1]
9. A rope on a pulley for hoisting things.^[19]
10. The draught of a fireplace, and a current of air in a house.^[19][1]
11. The length of a piece of cloth; the width of a garment from shoulder to shoulder; the distance from the crotch of trousers to the waist.^[19][1]
12. (Latin America) In al tiro, at once, immediately.^[16][21]

Word family

• tiroteo
• tirotear

Related words

• tirar
• tirada
• tirador
• tirón
• tirante

Usage notes

A separate tiro of Andalusia names the salamander and the gallipato; the DLE derives it, with a “perhaps”, from Late Latin tirus, the name of a fish, which the 2001 edition gave without the hedge.^[19][4] The REW lists the Spanish word beside Sicilian tiru “slow-worm”, and notes that the exact meaning of the Latin word, recorded by Polemius Silvius, is unknown.^[22] In Colombia tiro is also a lizard that changes colour like a chameleon.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 505
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tirar
4. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. tiro
5. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. tiro
6. ^ 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. tirar
7. ^ a b 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. tiro
8. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 422
9. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 222
10. ^ 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. 1330
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 282
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 845
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 750
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 963
15. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1587
16. ^ a b c Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 779
17. ^ Nehama, Joseph (1977), Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol, Madrid: CSIC, p. s.v. tiro
18. ^ 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. tiro
19. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. tiro
20. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tiro
21. ^ a b Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 178
22. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8755a