villano

Forms

villano (feminine villana, masculine plural villanos, feminine plural villanas)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote uillano, uilano and billanos.^[2] Berceo already has an apocopated variant villán, which later became a noun in Aragon for a peasant's garment.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin villānus (“farm worker, peasant”), from vīlla (“country house, farm”) with the suffix -ānus.^[4][1] Corominas reconstructs a Vulgar Latin word meaning “inhabitant of a country house, farmhand”, implied by its survival in all the western Romance languages.^[3][5]

The same word is Portuguese vilão, Galician vilán, Catalan vilà, Occitan vilan, French vilain and Italian villano.^[6][7][1] Everywhere it moved towards “low, vile, ignoble”.^[3] The French word even came to mean simply “bad”.^[3]

The Latin noun is probably from *weikslā, related to vīcus (“village, row of houses”), and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *weyḱ- (“settlement”).^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is a charter of 1074 in Oelschläger's list.^[3] In Berceo (13th century) the word means a peasant or commoner and is not always as unfavourable as it later became.^[3] By 1254 the Fuero Juzgo already speaks of dichos feos & uillanos “ugly and base words”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The meaning moved from “inhabitant of a country house, farmhand” to “commoner, not of noble birth” and then to “base, vile man”.^[5][3] Nebrija defined the villano as one who lives in a villa.^[10] Autoridades (1739) gave three senses: a commoner of a town or village as opposed to a nobleman, a rude or discourteous person, and a vile or unworthy one, and also the name of a Spanish dance imitating the dances of villagers.^[11] By 1884 the Academy marked the first sense as little used.^[12]

Old proverbs reflect the low view of the peasant: al villano, con la vara del avellano advised the stick rather than words.^[13] In the 16th and 17th centuries the villano was a popular dance and its music.^[14][4] Today the word mostly names the wicked character of a story, the antagonist of the hero.^[4][1] The diminutive villancico, from villán, first named the peasant himself and then the song, the copla de villancico.^[3][5]

Timeline

• 1074 – first record, in a charter.^[3][5]
• 13th century – Berceo uses villano and the variant villán.^[3]
• 1220–1250 – the derivative villanía is first recorded.^[5]
• 1254 – the Fuero Juzgo uses the adjective for base, insulting words.^[9]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija defines it as one who lives in a villa.^[10]
• 1532 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico City.^[15]
• 1605 – villancico appears in the Quijote.^[3][5]
• 1739 – Autoridades records the senses “commoner”, “rude”, “vile” and the dance.^[11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (historical) Belonging to the common estate of a town or village, as opposed to the nobility; also as a noun, a commoner: Los villanos pagaban tributo al señor.^[4][1]
2. rustic, rude, discourteous.^[4][1]
3. Base, unworthy or indecent; villainous: Fue una traición villana.^[4]

Noun

1. A Spanish dance and its music, common in the 16th and 17th centuries.^[4][16]
2. A wicked character in fiction, the antagonist of the hero; a villain.^[4][1]

Word family

• villanía
• villanaje
• villanesco
• villancico
• villanada
• villanote
• villanchón

Related words

• villa
• Latin vīlla
• Portuguese vilão
• English villain

Usage notes

El villano en su rincón is a colloquial name for a very withdrawn, unsociable man.^[4] In the Canaries villano is also the name of the natives of San Sebastián de La Gomera, known on the island as La Villa.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. villano
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 818
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. villano
5. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. villa
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
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 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. villano
10. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 430
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 488
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1090
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 745
14. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1662
15. ^ 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. villano
16. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. villano
17. ^ 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. villano