tordo

Forms

tordo m (plural tordos)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin turdus (“thrush”).^[2][3][1][4] The same Latin word is Portuguese tordo, Galician tordo, Asturian tordu, Catalan tord, French tourd and Italian tordo;^[5][6] Romanian sturz owes its ⟨z⟩ to the plural and the influence of sturnus (“starling”).^[6] The Catalan word is recorded from the 14th century.^[7]

The Latin word goes back to *torzdos and Proto-Indo-European *trosdos, the source also of Russian дрозд (drozd) and German Drossel and of the English word thrush.^[1][8] De Vaan reconstructs the Indo-European word as *(s)tr(o)sdho- “thrush”, with cognates in Celtic, Baltic, Slavic and Germanic, and thinks the Latin form more likely continues a variant with a syllabic /r/.^[9]

The verb aturdir “to stun, bewilder” is traced by the REW and by Segura Munguía to the bird, thought of as a foolish one, and Corominas also derives the older atordir from the bird name.^[6][10][11] García de Diego rejects this and derives the verb from Latin torpidus (“numb, sluggish”), the source of a regional adjective meaning “dull, stupid”.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Alfonsine prose has the word in the Moamín, which lists thrushes among the small birds whose flesh is to be given en essa sazon “at that season”, and names a tordo pintado “speckled thrush”: e la carne delos tordos pintados fazeles pro quando an calentura de dentro “and the flesh of speckled thrushes does them good when they have a fever inside”.^[12] The CORDE's first record, reported by DICCA-XV, is of the same date, about 1250.^[13]

Semantic evolution

The bird name has been in use since the Middle Ages, and Nebrija glossed it about 1495 as “a well-known bird”.^[13][14] Covarrubias in 1611 noted that the Latin turdus was rather the zorzal or fieldfare, prized as a delicacy by Horace and Martial, and that the common Spanish tordo was a smaller bird of poorer taste; he also recorded the saying hablar de seguro, como tordo en campanario, “to speak from safety, like a thrush on a bell tower”.^[15]

From the bird's speckled plumage the word came to describe the coat of a horse or mule mixed of black and white hairs: Autoridades defines this adjective and says it was taken from the colour of the bird,^[16] and the Academy's dictionary of 1817 distinguished tordo azul, tordo azúcar y canela and tordo sucio.^[17] The derivative tordillo, from 1570, names a horse of the same colour.^[2][10]

In the Americas the Spanish name was given to other black birds: the Mexican and Caribbean chronicles speak from 1541 of tordos that raid the maize fields,^[18] and today the word names the cowbirds (Molothrus) from Central America to the Río de la Plata and a black icterid of Chile.^[19][20] In Argentine slang tordo, a syllable reversal of doctor, means a doctor or a lawyer.^[19] In the Canaries and parts of Spain the name has also been given to the starling.^[21][22]

Timeline

• 1011 – DEMel cites the plural tordos from a document of the Oña collection.^[23]
• c. 1250 – the Moamín speaks of tordos and tordos pintados.^[12][13]
• 1256 – the word occurs in the Castilian Picatrix.^[24]
• c. 1325 – Corominas's date for the word.^[2][10]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses tordo with Latin ficedula.^[14][13]
• 1541 – first record in the Americas, in Michoacán, for birds driven off the maize.^[18]
• 1570 – first record of the derivative tordillo.^[2]
• 1591 – Percyvall translates tordo as “a stare, a stareling”.^[25]
• 1611 – Covarrubias compares the bird with the fieldfare of the Romans.^[15]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades enters the adjective for black-and-white horses.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin turdus.^[26]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a horse or mule: having a coat of mixed black and white hairs, dapple-grey: Montaba una yegua torda.^[3][1][22]

Noun

1. A thrush, especially the song thrush, a thick-bodied bird with a thin dark bill, olive-grey back and spotted whitish breast, common in Spain, which feeds on insects, fruit and olives.^[3][22][1]
2. (Latin America) A cowbird or other black bird of the icterid family, the male glossy black.^[3][19]
3. (Chile) A black icterid, Curaeus curaeus.^[19]
4. A marine fish of rocky coasts, a wrasse (also tordo de mar).^[22][27]
5. (Argentina, slang) A doctor or lawyer.^[19]

Word family

• tordillo
• tordancha

Related words

• zorzal
• aturdir
• Latin turdus
• Portuguese tordo

Usage notes

Tordo de agua is the white-throated dipper, a bird of streams.^[3][22] A separate adjective tordo “dull, stupid”, from Latin torpidus, is regional, recorded in Álava, Cantabria and Galicia.^[3][11][22]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tordo
3. ^ 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. tordo
4. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. tordo
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6925
6. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8999
7. ^ 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, 593
8. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 689
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 801
11. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6757
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. tordo
13. ^ a b c d 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. tordo
14. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 423
15. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1336
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 301
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 850
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. tordo
19. ^ a b c d e Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. tordo
20. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. tordo
21. ^ 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. tordo
22. ^ a b c d e f Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tordo
23. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. tordo
24. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
25. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 222
26. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1035
27. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. tordo