viscoso

Forms

viscoso (feminine viscosa, masculine plural viscosos, feminine plural viscosas)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin viscōsus (“sticky; smeared with birdlime”), formed from Latin viscum (“mistletoe; birdlime”) with the suffix -ōsus.^[2][3][4][1] Its popular relative is visco “birdlime”, inherited from the same Latin noun.^[5] The Latin adjective is also Italian viscoso, French visqueux, Catalan viscós, Portuguese viscoso, Old Occitan vescos and Romanian vâscos.^[6] Aragonese and some Castilian dialects have vescoso.^[7]

The Latin noun meant the mistletoe and the birdlime made from its berries.^[8] De Vaan compares Ancient Greek ἰξός (ixós, “mistletoe, birdlime”) and words for the sour cherry in Germanic and Slavic, and considers it either an Indo-European word or a European loanword for a fruit-bearing tree.^[8] Wiktionary connects it with Proto-Indo-European *weyḱs- and Proto-Slavic *višьňa.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first dated record in the Old Spanish Textual Archive is in Estéfano de Sevilla's medical treatise Visita y consejo de médicos (1381).^[9] DEMel cites the feminine viscosa earlier still, in the Castilian Libro del tesoro of the late 13th century, and López de Ayala's book on hunting birds (1386) has it too.^[10] The sense has always been “sticky, gluey”.^[11][4]

Semantic evolution

Corominas and the BDELC date the word from Alonso de Palencia (1490), together with viscosidad “stickiness”.^[2][3] In the Americas it described pools and plant juices in Santo Domingo in the 1540s.^[12] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1739) defined it as sticky or glutinous and quoted Mármol on a flesh that was hedionda, y viscosa, “stinking and slimy”.^[11] The feminine viscosa now also names viscose, a product of cellulose used for textile fibres.^[4] The medical dictionary DTME also defines it as having viscosidad.^[13]

Timeline

• late 13th century – the feminine viscosa in the Libro del tesoro, according to DEMel.^[10]
• 1381 – Estéfano de Sevilla's Visita y consejo de médicos.^[9]
• 1386 – López de Ayala's book on hunting birds.^[10]
• 1490 – Alonso de Palencia has viscoso and viscosidad.^[2][3]
• 1546 – first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[12]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as sticky or glutinous.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin viscosus.^[14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. sticky, viscous, glutinous: El jarabe estaba espeso y viscoso.^[4][1]
2. Having viscosity (viscosidad).^[13]

Noun

1. (feminine, viscosa) viscose: a product made by treating cellulose with caustic soda and carbon disulphide, used mainly for textile fibres.^[4]

Word family

• viscosidad

Related words

• visco
• Latin viscum
• Catalan viscós

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 830
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. visco
4. ^ a b c d e 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. viscoso
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. viscum
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. viscōsus
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. viscosus
8. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. viscoso
10. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. viscoso
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 497
12. ^ 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. viscoso
13. ^ a b Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. viscoso
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1093