tortuga

Forms

tortuga f (plural tortugas)^[1] The older form tartuga is found in Alfonso de Palencia (1490) and survives in Judeo-Spanish.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish tartuga, probably from Late Latin tartarūchus (“a demon”) in the feminine form.^[2][3][4][1] The Late Latin word is from Ancient Greek ταρταροῦχος (tartaroûkhos, “dweller in Tartarus”), formed from Τάρταρος (Tártaros, “Tartarus, the underworld”) and ἔχω (ékhō, “to have, hold”).^[3][4][5] The DLE and the BDELC explain the name by the belief of the peoples of the East and of the early Christians that the animal, living in mud, embodied evil and heresy.^[4][3]

This etymology, proposed by Rudolf Egger, rests on Greek reliefs of goddesses treading on a tortoise, on 4th-century mosaics at Aquileia where a cock defeats a tortoise, and on Saint Jerome's reading of the slow animal as the sins of heretics.^[2] Late Greek texts use the same word for infernal spirits, and a Roman curse tablet and a 6th-century lead tablet from Trogir apply its Latin form to a demon.^[2] Corominas accepts it as plausible though not proved, since no ancient text calls the tortoise a creature of the underworld; he explains the shorter Old Spanish form by the loss of a syllable, as in bravo from barbarus, and the modern ⟨o⟩ by folk etymology.^[2] He rejects the older derivations from Latin tortus (“twisted”) (Diez), from the expressive root of tartalear, for a tottering walk (Spitzer), or from testūdō (“tortoise”) (Schuchardt).^[2] The REW explains the French and Italian forms in ⟨tor-⟩ by the influence of the Latin word for “twisted”.^[6]

The word is Italian tartaruga, Portuguese tartaruga, Catalan tortuga (in Old Catalan also with ⟨tar-⟩), Occitan tartuga, recorded from the mid-12th century, and French tortue.^[2][6] The Medieval Latin form tortuca is recorded in 1297.^[2][7] Corominas considers it a recent and probably imported word in Castilian, whose native name for the animal was galápago.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first hit is the Esopete ystoriado (before 1482, printed at Toulouse in 1488), whose chapter heading reads del galapago o tortuga “of the galápago or tortoise”.^[8][9] Alfonso de Palencia (1490) still writes tartuga, telling how a dead tortoise left by the Nile gave Mercury the idea of the lyre.^[2] Columbus's diary of the first voyage (1492–1493) has sailors who had killed a tortuga and shared its shell with the natives.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Because galápago was the old name of the native freshwater turtle, tortuga came to be used above all for the sea turtle and the turtles of overseas lands; it was the usual word of the discoverers and conquerors of America.^[2] The 1739 Diccionario de Autoridades described its shell as strong enough to stop a musket ball, deriving the name from the curved shell.^[10] The Academy's 1884 edition gave the etymology as Latin testudo.^[11] The word also names the Roman testudo, the roof of shields under which soldiers approached a wall, and informally a slow person or vehicle.^[4][12][1]

Timeline

• 1488 – the Toulouse print of the Esopete ystoriado has tortuga.^[8][9]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia uses the older form tartuga.^[2][3]
• 1492–1493 – the diary of Columbus's first voyage.^[8]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives tortuga, galápago as Latin testudo.^[13][2]
• 1551 – Santo Domingo: large and small turtles que los indios llaman hicoteas.^[14]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives the name from testudo or from its slowness.^[15]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades derives it from the curved shell.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. testudo”.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A turtle, a large marine reptile of the order of chelonians, with flipper-like limbs that cannot be drawn into the shell.^[4][1]
2. A land tortoise, 20 to 30 cm long, with a highly domed shell.^[4][1]
3. Any chelonian, on land, in rivers or at sea.^[12]
4. (history) A testudo, the screen of shields used by Roman soldiers.^[4][12]
5. (informal) A very slow person or vehicle: Este autobús es una tortuga.^[12][1]

Related words

• tártaro
• Italian tartaruga
• French tortue

Usage notes

A paso de tortuga means “at a snail's pace”.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 562
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tortuga
4. ^ 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. tortuga
5. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre
8. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. tortuga
9. ^ a b 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
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies)
12. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tortuga
13. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 423
14. ^ 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. tortuga
15. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1340