trucha

Forms

trucha f (plural truchas)^[1] A document from Huesca of 1181 has the plural truetas, and the DEMel also records the spelling truyta.^[2] Leonese has trueita, beside Galician troita.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin tructa (“trout”).^[4][5][6][1] The Latin word appears only in late texts: in Saint Ambrose, in the second half of the 4th century, where the manuscripts hesitate between trocta and the usual form, and then in Isidore of Seville and Gregory of Tours;^[4][7] Pliny Valerianus has a masculine tructus.^[4][7]

The same Latin word gave Portuguese truta, Galician troita, Catalan truita, Old Occitan trocha, French truite and Italian trota.^[3][8] The Romance forms point to Latin variants with a long u, a short u and an o; the Spanish word fits the long vowel best, but could also come from the short one.^[5][4]

Corominas considers the Latin word a borrowing from another language, probably Celtic.^[4][5] With Ernout and Meillet he relates it to Gaulish trucantus, the source of Old Occitan troguen “gudgeon”.^[4] The DLE and Wiktionary derive it instead from Ancient Greek τρώκτης (trṓktēs, “gnawer, nibbler”), from τρώγω (trṓgō, “to gnaw”).^[6][1] Corominas rejects this: the Greek fish that Aelian describes was a kind of shark, and the Greek words for “trout” recorded in Bova and in Somavera's dictionary of 1707 must themselves come from Latin.^[4] The DHLF also finds the Greek word unrelated.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Gonzalo de Berceo uses the word for the fish in the Vida de San Millán (c. 1230, known from an 18th-century copy): the saint lived on bread and water, non anguila nin trucha “neither eel nor trout”.^[4][10] He uses it again in the Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos (c. 1236), where the dying saint is more pleased by the heavenly voices than by truchas cobdales “trout a cubit long”.^[10][4]

Semantic evolution

Corominas finds the word in general use in every period, from Juan Ruiz and Juan Manuel to Nebrija.^[4] Thirteenth-century town laws fixed its price, and the Cortes of Alcalá de Henares in 1252 forbade buying fresh trout for resale.^[10]

Covarrubias records ayunar, o comer trucha “fast, or eat trout” for people who will not settle for a middle course, and the Diccionario de Autoridades glosses it with Aut Caesar, aut nihil.^[11][12] No se toman truchas a bragas enjutas “trout are not caught with dry breeches”, that is, nothing of value comes without effort, is in Cervantes and was written in Chile as early as 1545.^[13][14][15]

From 1843 the Academy recorded es muy trucha of a shrewd man who is hard to deceive.^[15][16] In Mexico ser muy trucha still means “to be sharp” and ponerse trucha “to keep one's eyes open”; in Argentina and Uruguay the word is colloquial for a person's face or mouth, and a crafty person.^[6][17] In New Mexican Spanish it can mean any fish, and in the Canary Islands trucha is also a sweet fried pastry filled with sweet potato or almond, recorded from 1736.^[1][18][19]

Timeline

• 1181 – the plural truetas in a document from Huesca.^[2]
• c. 1230 – Berceo's Vida de San Millán, the first record in Castilian.^[4][10]
• 1250–1300 – the Moamín prescribes the eye of a salted trout as a remedy for hawks.^[20]
• 1252 – the Cortes of Alcalá de Henares regulate the sale of fresh trout.^[10]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin tructa as the equivalent of “trucha, a well-known fish”.^[21][4]
• 1545 – first record from the Americas, in Chile, in the proverb about dry breeches.^[14]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the proverb ayunar, o comer trucha.^[11]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades describes the fish and gives its Latin source tructa.^[12]
• 1843 – the Academy adds es muy trucha “he is very shrewd”.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology, Latin tructa.^[22]

Meanings

Noun

1. trout: a freshwater fish of the salmon family, brown with reddish or black spots and with edible white or pink flesh: Pescamos dos truchas en el arroyo.^[6][1]
2. (colloquial, Uruguay, Argentina) A person's face.^[6][17]
3. (colloquial, Uruguay, Argentina) A person's mouth.^[6][17]
4. (colloquial) A shrewd, crafty person (truchimán).^[6][17]

Adjective

1. (Mexico, Central America) sharp, clever, cunning; in ponerse trucha “to be on the alert”: Ponte trucha con ese vendedor.^[6][1]

Word family

• truchero

Related words

• trucho
• truchimán

Usage notes

Trucha de mar is the sea trout, also called reo.^[6][23] The DLE has a separate trucha of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, “a small shop or stall selling haberdashery”;^[6][24] Santamaría connected this word with chucho “peddling”.^[25] The Academy's dictionaries from the Diccionario de Autoridades to 2001 also gave trucha as a mechanics term for a crane (cabria), which García de Diego derives from Latin *traduculus rather than from the fish.^[12][26][27]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. trucha
3. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. tructa
4. ^ 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, 674
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. trucha
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. trucha
7. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. tructa
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8942
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. truite
10. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. trucha
11. ^ 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. 1353
12. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 369
13. ^ 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
14. ^ a b 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. trucha
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 721
16. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 2, 1678
17. ^ a b c d Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. trucha
18. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. trucha
19. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. trucha
20. ^ 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. trucha
21. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 425
22. ^ 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
23. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. trucha
24. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 796
25. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 323
26. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. trucha
27. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. *traduculus