tronido

Forms

tronido m (plural tronidos)^[1] Old Spanish tonidro, the older form, is found in the Libro de Alexandre; elsewhere the texts have tronido from the 13th century on, and atronido occurs in the Poema de Fernán González.^[2][3] Asturian has troníu and troñíos, and tronido is still said in Astorga, Santander and other neighbouring areas;^[2][4] Andalusian tronío is a variant of the same word.^[2][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish tronido, inherited from Latin tonitrus (“thunder”).^[5][1][3] The older Old Spanish form tonidro still has the consonants in the Latin order.^[2][6]

According to Corominas the Latin word first became *tronitus by metathesis of the /r/, and the stress then moved to the next-to-last syllable, as sonitus became sonido when the participles in -ĭtus were replaced by Spanish forms in -ido such as vendido and perdido.^[2][3] From this word the initial tr- spread to the verb tronar, from Latin tonāre (“to thunder”), and the expressive force of tr- helped it to last.^[2][6] The same Latin noun, stressed on its first syllable, gave estruendo and Portuguese estrondo.^[4][1]

The Latin noun also gave French tonnerre, Old Occitan toneire and Romanian tunet.^[7][1] In Latin the noun is probably formed from that verb with a suffix -tus, its -r- added under the influence of fulgetrum (“lightning”).^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250) has the old form tonidro for “thunder”: la voz cuemo tonidro “a voice like thunder”; one of its manuscripts, of the early 15th century, reads tronido there.^[2][3][9] In the Estoria de España of Alfonso X a people that frightened the whole world is compared to the great tronido that frightens men.^[10][9]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is the thunder that follows lightning, and it is the only one Nebrija gives: tronido o trueno, Latin tonitrus.^[3][11] A more general sense, a loud noise or bang, is recorded in the Crónica del halconero (c. 1454); Juan Ruiz de Alarcón used it for the report of a gun.^[3][2]

The Academy marked the word as antiquated in 1817 and 1843, and Domínguez in 1847 called it old and mostly poetic.^[12][13][3] In 1869 the Academy dropped the label and added the sense “bang”.^[14][3] The word lived on in the dialects: in Andalusia it came to mean show, swagger or ostentation, and the DHLE finds it very common in Mexico from the late 20th century.^[2][15][3] Its latest dictionary sense is a noisy failure.^[5][1]

Timeline

• c. 1223 – the Semejanza del mundo, in a 15th-century copy, has tronidos beside lightning; the DHLE takes it as the first record.^[3][9]
• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre has the older form tonidro.^[2][3]
• c. 1250 – the Poema de Fernán González, in a copy of 1460–1480, has como si fues' tronido.^[9][2]
• 1270–1284 – the Estoria de España of Alfonso X uses tronido for thunder.^[10][16]
• c. 1454 – the Crónica del halconero uses it for a loud noise in general.^[3]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary renders Latin tonitrus by el tronido.^[17][3]
• 1541 – the first record from the Americas, in Michoacán.^[18]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as the same as trueno.^[19]
• 1817 – the Academy labels it antiquated.^[12]
• 1869 – the Academy drops the label and adds the sense “bang”.^[14][3]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives its Latin etymon.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. thunder, the clap of thunder from the clouds.^[5][1]
2. A loud noise, bang or crash: Se oyó un tronido en la cantera.^[5][1]
3. A noisy failure, a fiasco.^[5][1]
4. (Andalusia) Show, swagger, ostentation.^[2][15]

Related words

• tronar
• trueno
• estruendo
• Latin tonitrus

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 Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 659
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Real Academia Española (2013–), Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (DHLE), https://www.rae.es/dhle, p. s.v. tronido
4. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
5. ^ a b c d e 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. tronido
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tronar
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ 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. tronido
10. ^ 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. tronido
11. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 425
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 866
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 721
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 769
15. ^ a b Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 628
16. ^ 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
17. ^ 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. tronido
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. tronido
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 366
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1055