trabajo

Forms

trabajo m (plural trabajos)^[1] Old Spanish wrote trabajo, trabaio, trauajo and travaio.^[2][3] The older vowel survives in Navarrese and Salamancan trebajo and Upper Aragonese treballo and triballo.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is a deverbal noun from Spanish trabajar, already old, since it is shared by all the western Romance languages: Portuguese trabalho, Galician traballo, Catalan treball, Occitan trebalh, French travail and Italian travaglio.^[4][6][7] Corominas rejects a direct descent from the Latin noun.^[4]

The verb continues *tripaliare (“to torture”), formed from Late Latin tripalium, a kind of stocks or instrument of torture recorded from the 6th century in the form trepalium (the councils of Auxerre and Mâcon, a Latin gloss of the 11th century).^[4][6] The name comes from the three stakes of the device, a compound of trēs (“three”) and pālus (“stake”); the classical adjective tripālis (“made of three stakes”) is clearly related.^[4][1] H. and R. Kahane took the Latin noun as a calque of the Greek τριπάσσαλον (tripássalon), an instrument of torture, from πάσσαλος (pássalos, “peg”).^[4][1] The first vowel was originally ⟨e⟩, as in Catalan, Occitan and Aragonese.^[6][4] Old Spanish trebajar then assimilated it to the next syllable.^[6][4]

This etymology goes back to Paul Meyer (1888).^[4] Corominas rejects Diez's older *trabaculum and Livingston's variant influenced by trabs (“beam”): the ⟨e⟩ of the eastern forms and the steady ⟨b⟩ of Old Spanish contradict them.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest record is in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy), where Joseph's brothers say por esto nos viene este travaio “that is why this affliction has come upon us”.^[3] Corominas dates the noun to a charter of 1212 in Oelschläger's list, and finds it common in Berceo.^[4][6] The first sense was “suffering, pain, hardship”, the sense of the verb's origin in a torture device: in Berceo the Virgin promises a fleeing captive non avrás nul travajo “you will have no trouble”.^[4][3]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages the verb mostly meant “to strive”, and labour was lavor; the sense “work” appears from the 14th century and may have come a little earlier in the noun, as in Juan Ruiz's el grand trabajo todas las cosas vence “great effort overcomes everything”.^[4] About 1400 the glossaries render labor as trabajo, and Nebrija gives Latin labor in 1495.^[4][8] From the 16th century the modern sense is the normal one, as labrar and obrar fell back.^[4] Corominas holds that this development was common to the western Romance languages and was not imitated from French, where travailler replaced ouvrer only in the 17th century.^[4]

The old sense of “hardship, misfortune” has never died out: Alfonso X's Lapidario has trabajo for effort, difficulty and suffering, and Cervantes called his last novel Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda.^[9][4] Covarrubias in 1611 defined it as the care and effort put into manual work, and anything that brings difficulty or affliction of body or soul.^[10] Autoridades derived it from Low Latin trepalium “place of torment”.^[11] Thieves' slang used it for prison or the galleys.^[12][13]

The Academy added trabajo de zapa “underhand work” in 1884 and the sense of physical work done by a force in the 20th century.^[14][15] In many American countries a trabajo is also a spell meant to protect or harm someone.^[16][17] Tagalog and Cebuano borrowed the word as trabaho.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – travaio “affliction” in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar, in a 13th-century copy.^[3]
• 1212 – a charter in Oelschläger's list, Corominas's first record.^[4][6]
• 1218–1250 – gualardon de su trauaio “reward for his labour” in the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes.^[3]
• c. 1236 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos has travajo “trouble”.^[3]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses the word for effort, difficulty and suffering.^[9]
• 1438 – first record of the derivative trabajoso.^[6]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin labor as its equivalent.^[8]
• 1522 – the first record from the Americas, in Cuba: todo es trabajo en esta vida.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as work, especially manual work, and affliction.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy records trabajo de zapa.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. work, labour: the action of working: El trabajo de la huerta no acaba nunca.^[19][1]
2. A paid job or occupation: Busca trabajo desde mayo.^[19][1]
3. A piece of work: something produced by human activity, especially a written or scientific study: Presentó un trabajo sobre los puertos medievales.^[19][20]
4. (Spain, education) A school or university assignment.^[1]
5. The operation of a machine, part or tool.^[19]
6. (economics) Human effort applied to producing wealth, as opposed to capital.^[19]
7. The workplace: Hoy salgo tarde del trabajo.^[19]
8. Difficulty, hindrance or harm: Me costó trabajo encontrarlo.^[19][21]
9. (usually in the plural) hardship, torment, misfortune.^[19]
10. (physics) Work: the product of a force and the distance through which its point of application moves.^[19][1]
11. (Latin America, colloquial) A spell worked to protect or harm a person, or to make an object into an amulet.^[19][16]
12. (in the plural) Want, poverty, a life of hardship.^[19]

Word family

• trabajoso
• trabajito
• teletrabajo

Related words

• trabajar
• trabajador
• Late Latin tripalium
• Portuguese trabalho
• French travail

Usage notes

Common phrases are costar trabajo “to be hard to do”, tomarse el trabajo de “to take the trouble to” and trabajos forzados “hard labour”.^[21][22] Trabajo de zapa is work done secretly to reach some end.^[19]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. trabajo
3. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. trabajo
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 571
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6859
6. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. trabajar
7. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. trabajo
8. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 423
9. ^ 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. trabajo
10. ^ 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. 1341
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 312
12. ^ Hidalgo, Juan (1609), Romances de germanía de varios autores, con el vocabulario por la orden del a.b.c. para declaración de sus términos y lengua, Barcelona: Sebastián de Cormellas (ed. Madrid 1779), p. 203
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 853
14. ^ 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), p. 1038
15. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. trabajo
16. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. trabajo
17. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. trabajo 1
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. trabajo
19. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. trabajo
20. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. trabajo
21. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. trabajo
22. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 757