trozo

Forms

trozo m (plural trozos)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish troço, probably borrowed from Catalan tros (“piece”) or Occitan tros.^[2][3][1] The DLE calls it of unknown origin.^[4] Corominas sees it as a late word in Castilian: the Catalan and Occitan word is recorded three and a half centuries earlier, in Marcabru and in the Girart de Rossilhon, and is their only word for “piece”, while the Castilian word long kept a literary flavour.^[2] The form Aragonese troz, common from 1369, and the unexpected undiphthongised /o/ of the Castilian word beside the open /ɔ/ of Catalan point the same way.^[2] Prat Sabater counts it among the words for which a Catalan or Occitan source is proposed.^[5]

The origin of the Catalan and Occitan word is uncertain.^[2][3] Diez equated it with Italian torso (“plant stalk; torso”) and Old French tros (“stump of a plant; piece of a lance”), from Latin thyrsus (“stalk”), which is from Ancient Greek θύρσος (thúrsos, “plant stalk, Bacchic staff”); the REW lists it under that word with doubts, and Bénaben follows it.^[2][6][7][8] Corominas finds the metathesis of the /r/ and the open vowel hard to explain, and wonders whether a base of unknown, perhaps pre-Roman, origin met the French word.^[2] He suggests that destrozar may be an altered form of Old Occitan destrossar (“to rob, plunder”) and Old Catalan destrossar, and that the influence of this verb would account for the irregularities of the Catalan and Occitan word as a descendant of the Latin one.^[2][3]

Corominas rejects other proposals: Malkiel's back-formation from the verb, taken as Vulgar Latin *destructiare, Spitzer's blend of tozzo (“chunk”) with Catalan trencar (“to break”), and García de Diego's torosus (“bulging”), which he calls absurd.^[2] García de Diego gives that source in his dictionary.^[9] Covarrubias derived the word from troçar “to cut off”, and the Academy in 1884 from tritum, the supine of terere (“to rub, break”).^[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is Alfonso de Palencia's vocabulary of 1490: lancinare es mucho arrincar y fieramente fazer troços y despedaçar en partes “lancinare is to tear out hard and fiercely make pieces and break into parts”.^[2][3] Earlier eastern records exist: the DEMel lists troz and trozo in the Repartimiento de Orihuela of 1288 and in Upper Aragonese documents, and the CDH has troços in a recipe manuscript of about 1385 and in Fernández de Heredia's Aragonese Libro de Marco Polo (1396).^[12][13]

Semantic evolution

In the classical period the word meant only a piece of something cut or broken off: Diego Gracián and Cervantes speak only of pieces of lances, and Covarrubias of a piece of wood.^[2][14] It is missing from Nebrija's and other 16th-century dictionaries.^[2] Góngora and Ruiz de Alarcón do not use it either.^[2] Autoridades defines it as a piece of something cut or separated, with a military sense, a body of cavalry, now called a regiment.^[15] Corominas notes that it still sounds literary, and that trozos escogidos “selected passages” is more usual than trozos of meat or land.^[2] The DLE also has naval senses: the groups of seamen of a maritime district, and trozo de abordaje, the boarding parties of a warship.^[4] In Cuba it meant a small herd of pigs, and in the Dominican Republic it is a share of a lottery ticket.^[16][17]

Timeline

• 1288 – troz and trozo in the Repartimiento de Orihuela.^[12]
• 1369 – Aragonese troz becomes common from this date.^[2]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia uses troços.^[2][3]
• 1532 – a record from Mexico City: pieces of firewood thrown at the Spaniards.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as a piece of wood.^[10]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades gives the military sense.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy derives it from Latin tritum.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A piece, part of something taken apart from the rest: un trozo de pastel.^[4][1]
2. A passage or excerpt of a literary or musical work.^[19]
3. (nautical) Each of the groups of seamen assigned to the maritime districts.^[4]
4. (military, historical) Each of the two halves, vanguardia and retaguardia, of a column.^[4]
5. (Dominican Republic) A share of a lottery ticket.^[17]

Word family

• trozar

Related words

• destrozar
• destrozo
• torso
• Catalan tros

Usage notes

Phrases include trozo de abordaje “boarding party” and colloquial ser alguien un trozo de pan “to be a good-natured person”.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 670
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. trozo
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. trozo
5. ^ Prat Sabater, Marta (2003), Préstamos del catalán en el léxico español, doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, p. 116
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8725
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. trozo
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6756
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. 1351
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), p. 1056
12. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. trozo
13. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. trozo
14. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 1122
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 369
16. ^ Pichardo, Esteban (1836), Diccionario provincial de voces cubanas, Matanzas: Imprenta de la Real Marina, p. 253
17. ^ a b Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. trozo
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. trozo
19. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. trozo