trapo

Forms

trapo m (plural trapos)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin drappus (“cloth, rag”).^[2][3][4][1] Spanish and Portuguese changed the initial /d/ to /t/ because no native Latin word began with ⟨dr⟩; the other Romance languages kept the /d/.^[2][3] Wiktionary takes it through Medieval Latin trapus, a form Niermeyer records beside drapus.^[1][5]

The same Late Latin word is Portuguese trapo, recorded about 1200, and Catalan drap, Occitan drap, French drap and Italian drappo.^[2][6] Covarrubias in 1611 and the Academy in 1884 took the Spanish word from the French one.^[7][8] Romance derivatives of it include drapeau (“flag”) and drappello.^[6]

The Late Latin word is first found in the Latin translation of Oribasius (5th–6th centuries), then in Tironian notes and the laws of the Germanic peoples.^[2] Corominas finds a native Latin word impossible because of its late date and its initial ⟨dr⟩, and a Germanic source unsupported by the attested Germanic forms.^[2] The DLE calls it pre-Roman, perhaps Celtic, and Gómez de Silva Celtic.^[4][9] Gaulish personal names in ⟨Drappo-⟩ support this.^[2] Pokorny and Corominas prefer a pre-Celtic Indo-European language, and Corominas compares Lithuanian drápanos (“white linen”).^[2] Wiktionary instead derives it from Frankish *drāpi (“that which is fulled, drab cloth”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Charters of 1081 and 1095 are the first records; the DEMel has trapo in a charter of 1085 from the cartulary of Fanlo.^[2][3][10] In the earliest texts it is cloth as a commodity: the Fuero de Alcalá (c. 1235) fines a weaver or merchant who sells or measures trapo of wool or linen without a true measuring rod.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The sense moved from “cloth” to “rag”: the 1251 Calila already has un trapo viejo, “an old rag”, used to cover nakedness, and Alfonso X's prose has trapo for a piece of cloth, especially one for dressing wounds.^[2][12] Autoridades in 1739 still gave “cloth” first, noting that a cloth merchant had been called a trapero, and then “piece of torn, worn-out cloth”.^[13] The Academy's 1869 edition marked “cloth” as old.^[14]

Sailors used the word for the sails, above all in a todo trapo “under full sail”, which came to mean “at full speed” and “lavishly”.^[2][4] In bullfighting it is the cape or the red cloth of the muleta, and in the plural, colloquially, clothes, especially women's.^[4] Asturian trapu and Spanish trapo also mean a large snowflake.^[2][4] The word passed into Tagalog as trapo.^[1]

Timeline

• 1081 – the first record, in a charter.^[2][3]
• 1085 – trapo in a charter of the cartulary of Fanlo.^[10]
• c. 1235 – the Fuero de Alcalá regulates the sale of trapo of wool or linen.^[11]
• 1251 – the Calila has un trapo viejo.^[2]
• 13th century – the derivative trapero “cloth merchant” is first recorded.^[2][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin pannus and panniculus.^[15]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives the word from French and records the proverb venir al atar de los trapos.^[7]
• 1635 – con todo el trapo, “under full sail”, is recorded in Guatemala.^[16]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as “cloth” and as “a worn-out rag”.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A rag: a discarded piece of cloth.^[4][1]
2. A household cloth for drying, cleaning or dusting; a dishcloth or duster: Pasa un trapo húmedo por la mesa.^[4][1]
3. (nautical) A sail (vela) of a vessel; the sails as a whole.^[4]
4. A large snowflake.^[4]
5. (bullfighting, colloquial) The cape, or the red cloth of the muleta.^[4]
6. (in the plural, colloquial) Clothes, especially women's.^[4][1]
7. (obsolete) cloth; paño.^[4]

Word family

• trapero
• trapillo
• trapío
• entrapar
• trapear
• trapajo
• trapajoso
• trapería
• trapito

Related words

• paño
• Late Latin drappus
• Portuguese trapo
• French drap

Usage notes

Set phrases include a todo trapo “at full speed; lavishly”, trapos sucios “dirty linen”, things best kept private.^[4][1][17]

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 i j k l m n Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 604
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. trapo
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. trapo
5. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. trapus
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2765
7. ^ 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. 1345
8. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1043
9. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. trapo
10. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. trapo
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. trapo
12. ^ 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. trapo
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 331
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 761
15. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 424
16. ^ 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. trapo
17. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 621