tortilla

Forms

tortilla f (plural tortillas)^[1] Old Spanish tortiella, in 13th-century texts such as Alfonso X's Lapidario and General Estoria;^[2][3] tortilla is found from the early 15th century.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is the diminutive from Spanish torta + -illa, “little round cake”, first recorded as tortiella.^[4][1][2] Corominas lists it among the derivatives of torta and dates the sense “egg dish” to Quevedo.^[3][5]

The base word is of uncertain origin, and is already recorded as Late Latin torta in the 4th century.^[5][6] Corominas rejects the old derivation from the participle torta (“twisted”), because the Romance vowel does not fit, and thinks it probably came into Vulgar Latin from a Greek contraction of the article and Ancient Greek ἀρτίδιον (artídion, “small loaf”), a diminutive of ἄρτος (ártos, “bread”).^[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record in the CDH is the plural tortiellas in Abraham de Toledo's Moamín, a book on hunting animals (1250, in a copy of the second half of the 13th century): a remedy is kneaded and made into tortiellas, small flat cakes, and left to dry.^[2] In Alfonso X's Lapidario a stone is found always round and flat, fecha como tortiella, “made like a little cake”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish the word named a small flat cake; the Escorial Bible manuscript I-j-8 uses tortiella to translate Latin laganum.^[3] Percyvall (1591) gives English “a tansie”.^[7] Corominas dates the sense “dish of fried beaten eggs” to Quevedo, and Autoridades (1739) defines it as eggs beaten and fried in oil or lard in a round shape, like a cake, whence the name.^[3][8] Terreros records volverse la tortilla “for fortune to change”, and the Academy defined the phrase in 1884.^[9][10]

In Mexico and Central America the Spaniards gave the name to the flat maize bread of the indigenous peoples: “half a maize tortilla” is recorded in Mexico in 1540.^[11][3] In Argentina, Bolivia and Chile it is a small flat cake of wheat or maize baked in the embers.^[4][3] English borrowed the word for the maize cake in the 1640s, and for the omelette by 1831.^[12]

Timeline

• 1250 – tortiellas in the Moamín.^[2]
• 1256 – tortiella in Alfonso X's Picatrix.^[2]
• c. 1400–1421 – tortillas de manteca in Sánchez de Vercial's Libro de los exemplos.^[2]
• 1540 – first record of the maize tortilla, in Mexico.^[11]
• 1553 – Cieza de León's Crónica del Perú mentions tortillas.^[13]
• 1640s – first record of English tortilla.^[12]
• 1739 – Autoridades defines the egg dish.^[8]
• 1884 – the Academy records the phrases hacerse tortilla and volverse la tortilla.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. An omelette: beaten egg set in a frying pan in a round or long shape, sometimes with other ingredients: una tortilla de champiñones.^[4][1]
2. (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile) A small flat cake (torta), usually salted, of wheat or maize flour, baked in the embers.^[4]
3. (Mexico, Central America, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic) A flat round flatbread of maize dough, eaten filled or with other food; a tortilla.^[4][14][1]

Word family

• tortillera
• tortillería

Related words

• torta
• tortita

Usage notes

Tortilla española or tortilla de patatas is the potato omelette;^[4] tortilla de harina in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras is a flatbread of wheat flour.^[4] Volverse la tortilla means that things turn out the opposite of what was expected.^[4][10] In slang the word also names sex between women, a sense Wikcionario explains as a back-formation from tortillera.^[15][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
3. ^ 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, 561
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. tortilla
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. torta
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. torta
7. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 223
8. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 308
9. ^ 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, 670
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1037
11. ^ 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. tordilla
12. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
13. ^ Grupo IATEXT, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, AMERLEX: corpus of americanisms in early texts on the Americas (online database), p. s.v. tortilla
14. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. tortilla
15. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 206
16. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org