uva

Forms

uva f (plural uvas)^[1] Old Spanish texts spell it uva, uua, vua, huua, huva and uba;^[2] DEMel's earliest record is ubas, in a document of 1165 in the Huesca charter collection.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin ūva (“bunch of grapes”).^[3][4][1] In Latin the word meant a bunch of grapes, grapes in general and the vine; from its shape it also named the uvula.^[5][6]

The same word is Portuguese uva, Galician uva, Asturian uva, Italian uva, Sardinian úa and Romanian auă.^[7][8][1]

The Latin word goes back to *oiwā.^[9][1] De Vaan compares tree names in other languages: Ancient Greek ὄα (óa, “service tree”), այգի (aygi, “vine”), Baltic and Slavic words for the bird cherry and the willow, and Proto-Germanic *īwaz (“yew”); their root vowels can't be reconciled in one Indo-European form, so the word may have been taken from a non-Indo-European language.^[10] Wiktionary sets up Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyHw- (“a kind of tree with berries”).^[1] Gómez de Silva instead links it with a root for “berry” seen in Lithuanian and Russian.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to 1191.^[3] The first context in the CDH is the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy): Pharaoh's cupbearer dreams of a vine with three branches that aduzian uvas e maduravan “bore grapes and ripened”, and presses the grapes into the cup.^[12] The sense is the fruit of the vine, as it still is.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In the 13th-century fueros uvas are the grapes of the vineyard, whose picking in another man's vine was fined.^[12] Alfonso X's Lapidario already used uva for a disease of the uvula, a sense the Academy still lists.^[12][4] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1739) called it a purely Latin word, used it also for the whole bunch, and recorded a joking use for a drunkard, from Quevedo.^[13] Aragon, La Mancha, Navarre and La Rioja still use uva for the bunch of grapes.^[4]

In Spain mala uva is colloquial for ill will or a bad temper.^[4] In Central America uva is a ripe coffee berry, and in the Dominican Republic the adjective describes someone merry with drink.^[14]

Timeline

• 1191 – first record according to Corominas.^[3]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar has uvas, in a 13th-century copy.^[12]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario compares a stone to a bunch of grapes.^[15]
• 1548 – first record in the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[16]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades calls it a purely Latin word.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin uva.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. A grape: the round, juicy berry of the vine (vid), which grows in bunches.^[4][1]
2. The berry of certain other shrubs, such as the barberry.^[4][18]
3. (medicine) A small grape-shaped swelling of the uvula.^[4]
4. (medicine) A cluster of small warts on the eyelid.^[4]
5. (Aragon, La Mancha, Navarre, La Rioja) A bunch of grapes (racimo).^[4]
6. (Central America, Puerto Rico) A ripe coffee berry.^[14][19]

Word family

• úvula

Related words

• Latin ūva
• Portuguese uva

Usage notes

The phrase mala uva is colloquial in Spain for ill will or a bad temper: Lo dijo con mala uva.^[4] The capitalised UVA is a separate word, used mainly in rayos UVA: an acronym of ultravioleta A that names ultraviolet A radiation.^[4][20][21]

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. uva
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. uva
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. uva
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. ūua
6. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. uva
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 6999
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9104
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. ūva
11. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 712
12. ^ 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. uva
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 403
14. ^ 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. uva
15. ^ 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. uva
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. uva
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1065
18. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 1090
19. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. uva
20. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos