tumba

Forms

tumba f (plural tumbas)^[1] Old Spanish texts also write tunba.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin tumba (“grave”), which is from Ancient Greek τύμβος (túmbos, “burial mound, grave”);^[1] Corominas records it first in Berceo.^[3][4][5][1] The Latin word is ecclesiastical, first found in Prudentius in the 4th century.^[6][7] The Greek noun meant a burial mound or cairn in Homer, then a tomb or grave in general.^[8][9] Its further origin is uncertain: Wiktionary connects it with *tum- (“to swell”), a root that Beekes takes as Mediterranean, and the DHLF and Bénaben relate it to tumulus (“mound”) and tumeō (“to swell”).^[1][10][6]

The same Late Latin word is Italian tomba, French tombe, Occitan tomba and Catalan tomba.^[11][6] Coromines calls the Catalan word semi-learned and first records it in the 14th century.^[12] Corominas leaves open whether the Galician and Leonese tumbo (“burial mound; catafalque”), also used in Old Spanish for a cartulary, come from the Late Latin word or from a pre-Roman one.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Berceo's Del sacrificio de la misa (1228–1246, in an early 14th-century copy) the women at Christ's grave vidieron de la tumba la lápida redrada “saw the stone taken away from the tomb”.^[2] The Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250) uses tunba for the stone tomb that a craftsman builds before its cover.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Corominas finds the word frequent in Berceo and in use at every period.^[3] Covarrubias described the tumba as a kind of chest with a rounded, half-circle lid placed over a burial.^[13] He took the word from Greek, rejecting a Hebrew source and an Arabic one proposed by Guadix.^[13] Autoridades kept this, adding the frame placed under a coffin during a funeral and, by analogy, the arched roof of some coaches.^[14] In 1869 the Academy defined the word first as a coffin-shaped frame for funeral rites and only second as “sepulchre”; in 1899 “sepulchre” moved to the first place, as it is today.^[15][16][5] A Cuban record of 1569 speaks of a tumba with four torches set over a grave in a church.^[17]

Modern phrases are ser alguien una tumba “to keep a secret” and a tumba abierta “at breakneck speed”, first said of cyclists going downhill, and figuratively “boldly, openly”.^[5][18]

Timeline

• 1228–1246 – Berceo writes of the stone of Christ's tumba (in an early 14th-century copy).^[2]
• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre has the spelling tunba.^[2]
• 1356 – the Fuero viejo de Castilla glosses fuesa with tumba, sepultura.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses tumba sepultura with Latin bustum and tymba.^[19]
• 1569 – the first record from the Americas, in Cuba.^[17]
• 1591 – Percyvall translates it “a tombe”.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from the Greek word for a grave.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology and adds the luxury frame on the box of gala coaches.^[21]
• 1899 – “sepulchre” becomes the first sense in the Academy's dictionary.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A grave: a place where a dead body is buried.^[5][1]
2. A tomb: a stone structure in which a dead body lies.^[5][1]
3. A coffin-shaped frame set on a catafalque or on the floor for a funeral service.^[5]
4. The arched roof of some coaches.^[5]
5. (historical) A richly covered, mound-shaped frame placed on the box of gala coaches.^[5]

Word family

• tumbal
• tumbilla
• tumbón

Related words

• túmulo
• Latin tumba
• Ancient Greek τύμβος (túmbos)
• French tombe

Usage notes

The DLE has two more words spelled tumba.^[5] One is derived from tumbar: a jolting, a violent fall or somersault, an old Andalusian Christmas dance, and in the Antilles, Colombia and Venezuela the felling of trees to clear land.^[5][4][22] The other is from Bantu: in Cuba, Equatorial Guinea and the Dominican Republic a drum of African origin, first made from a hollowed tree trunk.^[5][23] In Argentina, Chile and Uruguay tumba is also a piece of poor, tough boiled meat.^[22][23]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. tumba
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 690
4. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tumba
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. tumba
6. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. tumba
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. tumba
12. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 8, 546
13. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1355
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 375
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 771
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 991
17. ^ 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. tumba
18. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tumba
19. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 425
20. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 226
21. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1057
22. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 798
23. ^ 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. tumba