The Latin root LAC-, part 2: Verbs derived from the root -laqu-/-lac- (i)

[This entry is an excerpt from Chapter 46, "Delicado and delgado: The Latin root -LAC-", of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

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Verbs derived from the root -laqu-

Lat. lăquĕāre

Just like English developed a verb to lasso from the noun lasso and Spanish developed a verb lazar from the noun lazo, Latin too developed the verb lăquĕāre from the noun lăquĕus whose principal parts were lăquĕō, lăquĕāre, lăquĕāvī, lăquĕātum. Just like the English and Spanish verbs, this Latin verb meant ‘to noose, entangle, ensnare’ (Eng. ensnare means ‘catch in or as in a trap’, COED). The verb lăquĕāre was not very common in Latin and it has left us no descendants in either English or Spanish and thus we can safely say that the Spanish verbs lazar and lacear that we saw in the preceding section are independent developments in this language and not descendants of this Latin verb.

Interestingly, there was a Latin noun which was a homonym of the present infinitive wordform lăquĕāre of this verb. This noun is totally unrelated to the verb, however. Both its nominative and accusative singular wordforms were either lăquĕāre or lăquĕar (the genitive is lăquĕāris.) The meaning of this noun was ‘paneled or fretted ceiling’. A derived adjective was lăquĕātus ‘paneled’. The source of this noun is unknown. Curiously, the word was borrowed into English as a technical term.[1] Also, note that Spanish has a verb laquear that means ‘to lacquer, varnish’, which in some dialects is lacar. This verb is also not related to Lat. lăquĕāre.[2]

Although lăquĕāre was a little used verb in Latin, two other also rare verbs were derived from it by prefixation, namely ablăquĕāre and illăquĕāre. Lat. ablăquĕāre was formed with the prefix ab‑ ‘from, away from’ and it meant ‘to turn up the earth round a tree, in order to form a trench for water’ (L&S). Lat. illăquĕāre was formed with the prefix in‑ and it meant primarily ‘to ensnare, take in a snare’.

Lat. lăcĕre and its derivates

As we said, the Latin verb lăquĕāre seems to have been developed out of the noun lăquĕus, but there was an actual simpler verb with the same meaning in early Latin, namely the third conjugation iō‑ variant verb lăcĕre. The ancient verb lăcĕre and the classical verb lăquĕāre presumably have the same root but the latter, which seems to have been derived from the noun, replaced the older one. The meaning of this verb lăcĕre was ‘to entice, allure’ (L&S), but also ‘to ensnare, catch with a noose, entrap’ (OED). The present active form of lăcĕre was lacĭō and its present infinitive form was lăcĕre, but it had no perfect or supine forms that we know of and thus no passive participle from which to derive nouns. Some sources, however, give lēxī as the 1st person perfect verb form, by analogy with the form the perfect of derived verbs have (see below).

The verb lăcĕre is not found in Classical Latin and the single reference we have to it is from a second century grammarian named Sextus Pompeius Festus—also popularly known as Festus Grammaticus—who claimed this ancient verb was the source of a number of derived (prefixed) verbs that did exist in Classical Latin, namely allĭcĕre, conlĭcĕre, dēlĭcĕre, ēlĭcĕre, illĭcĕre, pellĭcĕre, and prōlĭcĕre. Since some of these verbs have left descendants in English and Spanish, all of which have come through borrowing, we are going to take a look at them here.

As you can see, in all of these verbs, the addition of the prefix resulted in the changing of the root from ‑lac‑ to ‑lĭc‑, a common type of sound change found in verbal roots in early Latin upon the addition of a prefix to form a derived verb, since the addition of the prefix changed the stress pattern of the word, which at the time was word-initial (cf. Part I, Chapter 8, §8.3.3.1). The un-prefixed verb became obsolete by Classical Latin times, though the derived ones were quite common. The different derived verbs can be seen below with their basic meanings and the prefixes that were used for their derivation. Also listed are some of the words that are derived from these verbs in English and Spanish.

Prefix	Base Verb	Lat. verb	Meaning	Spanish	English
ad‑	+ lacĕre =	allĭcĕre	‘draw gently to’	aliciente	—
con‑		conlĭcĕre	‘mislead, beguile’	—	—
dē‑		dēlĭcĕre	‘entice away’	delicioso	delicious
ex‑		ēlĭcĕre	‘entice, seduce’	—	elicit
in‑		illĭcĕre	‘entice, seduce’	—	—
per‑		pellĭcĕre	‘attract; allure’	—	—
prō		prōlĭcĕre	‘lead on’	—	—

Four of these derived verbs have left us no descendants in Spanish or English. Take the verb conlĭcĕre, which is formed with the preposition/prefix con‑ ‘with’ and meant ‘to mislead, beguile’. No form of this verb or any derivates of it have made it into English or Spanish. The verb pellĭcĕre also has left no descendants. It was formed with the preposition/prefix per‑ ‘through’ and it meant ‘to attract/draw away; to allure, seduce, induce, win over, etc.’. Also without English or Spanish descendants is the verb prōlĭcĕre, formed with the preposition/prefix pro‑ ‘on behalf of, in place of, in favor of, before, for, etc.’, and meaning ‘to lure forward, lead on’. Finally, also without descendants in our languages is Lat. illĭcĕre, formed with the prefix in‑ ‘not, opposite of’ and meaning ‘to entice, seduce’. Note that Lat. illĭcĕre is not related to the adjectives Eng. illicit and Sp. ilícito.[3]

There were two other verbs related to lăcĕre. One was the verb lăcessĕre, derived from this verb by means of the verbal suffix ‑ess‑ĕre which formed intensive Latin verbs out of a small number verbs such as petessĕre ‘to strive after, pursue’ from petĕre ‘to seek, etc.’ (source of Sp. pedir) and făcessĕre ‘to do eagerly or earnestly, etc.’ from făcĕre ‘to do, make’ (source of Sp. hacer). The principal parts of lăcessĕre were: lăcessō, lăcessĕre, lăcessīvī, lăcessītum and its main meaning was ‘to excite, provoke, challenge, exasperate, irritate’ and was thus synonymous with irritāre (cf. Eng. irritate ~ Sp. irritar) and provocāre (cf. Eng. provoke ~ Sp. provocar).

The final verb related to obsolete lăcĕre was lăctāre, which was its frequentative version, a first conjugation verb derived from the stem lact‑ of a putative passive participle lactus of the verb lăcĕre. (Principal parts: lactō, lactāre, lactāvī, lactātum.) Lat. lăctāre meant ‘to allure, wheedle, flatter, deceive with fair words, to dupe, cajole’ (L&S). This verb was homonymous with another unrelated verb that meant ‘to produce milk; to suck milk’, the source of the learned verbs Eng. lactate ~ Sp. lactar. This second, unrelated verb is derived from the noun lac lactis ‘milk’ (source of Sp. leche).

A number of verbs were derived from the first lăctāre by prefixation, which are mostly synonyms or very similar in meaning. They are the following: adlectāre or allectāre ‘to allure, to entice’; dēlectāre ‘delight, please, amuse, fascinate, etc.’, and derived from it, the first conjugation, deponent condēlectārī ‘to be delighted with something’; inlectāre or illectāre ‘entice, attract, allure’; oblectāre ‘delight, please, amuse’; prōlectāre ‘to entice, allure’; and sublectāre ‘to wheedle, cajole, coax’. Only one of these verbs has left a significant legacy in English and Spanish, namely dēlectāre, so we will discuss this verb below after we discuss the verb dēllicĕre, which has the same prefix. Lat. allectāre has given us Eng. allect, a very rare verb borrowed from Latin in the 15th century with the meaning ‘to entice, allure; to attract’ (OED).

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[1] The OED tells us that laquear is an English word, borrowed at some point as a technical term, primarily in Architecture, with a meaning similar to the original word’s, namely ‘a ceiling consisting of paneled recessed compartments, with bands between the panels’ (SOED), though the word has also been use in Anatomy. The use of this term in English seems to have been minimal, however, and most dictionaries do not mention this word. The OED associates this term with the Latin noun lăquĕus, a rather controversial etymology.

[2] Sp. laquear developed in Spanish from the noun laca that refers to ‘a glossy resinous substance used on wood or metal for protection and to give it a shiny surface’. English has two versions of the equivalent word, lac and lacquer, the latter of which is more common and comes through a French/Portuguese variant of the word that had an r in it. These words are not related in any way to Lat. lăquĕus or lăquĕar(e), since its ultimate source is a word in an Indo-Iranian language (through Persian and Arabic sources) that referred to a type of red dye.

Eng. shellac is a combination of the words shell and lac and it refers to ‘lac resin melted into thin flakes, used for making varnish’. The word is a calque of the French phrase laque en écailles ‘lac in thin plates’. Spanish uses lac for lacquer, lac, and shellac.

[3] The adjectives Eng. illicit and Sp. ilícito are loanwords from Lat. illĭcĭtus ‘not allowed, forbidden’, formed from the negative prefix in‑ and the adjective licĭtus ‘lawful’, derived from the identical passive participle of the verb licēre ‘to be allowed, permitted’, a second conjugation impersonal verb whose principal parts were: licet, licēre, licuit, licitum.

The Latin root LAC-, part 1: Latin laqueus and the words derived from it

[This entry is an excerpt from Chapter 46, "Delicado and delgado: The Latin root -LAC-", of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

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Latin laqueus and the words derived from it

The Latin root we are going to be exploring in this chapter had several forms, primarily ‑laque‑, ‑lac‑ and ‑lic‑. This morpheme and it has given us many interesting cognates in English and Spanish, such as Eng. delicious ~ Sp. delicioso and Eng. delicate ~ (learned) Sp. delicado ‘delicate’ and (patrimonial) Sp. delgado ‘thin’. The most basic, un-prefixed cognates are, however, Sp. lazo ‘ribbon, bow; snare, trap’ ~ Eng. lasso and lace, which is where we are going to start.

Sp. lazo and Eng. lasso and lace can be traced back to Latin lăquĕus ‘noose, snare’, and its ancestor, the Proto-Italic verbal root *lakw‑ meaning ‘to ensnare’. Actually, the source would be a somewhat changed word in Vulgar Latin which has been reconstructed as *laceum or *lacio from the different reflexes of this word in the Romance languages. In post-classical Latin, the word came to have other related meanings, primarily ‘strap, band, cord (for tying or adorning garment or shoe)’ (OED). Words with this root are not found in any other Indo-European languages, which suggests that this root does not go back to Proto-Indo-European, but its ultimate origin is thus unknown. Descendants of Latin lăquĕus are found in most Romance languages, e.g. Old Occitan latz, Catalan llaç, Portuguese laço, Italian laccio, all of them earliest with the sense ‘noose’ or ‘snare’ when they were first attested in the 12-13th centuries.

The Spanish noun lazo is a direct patrimonial descendant of Lat. lăquĕus, or actually from Vulgar Latin *laceum or *lacio. The main meanings of this word today are ‘ribbon’ (synonymous with cinta) and ‘bow’, that is, a ribbon tied in a decorative knot. However, in the context of hunting, it can still mean ‘snare, trap’, the original meaning of the word, and in the context of animal husbandry, it can mean ‘lasso’. In Mexican Spanish, lazo can also be used with the generic sense of ‘rope’ (cf. Standard Sp. cuerda).

Figure 168: Girl with bow: Glaube ‘believe’, by C. V. Muttich (1873–1924), c. 1914.[i]

The English cognate lasso, pronounced either [ˈlæ.soʊ̯] or, particularly in British English, [lə.ˈsu], is a borrowing from Spanish. A lasso is ‘a long rope with a running noose at one end, used especially to catch horses and cattle’ (DOCE), though this word is associated with the western US. It was borrowed in the 18th or early 19th centuries in the context of cattle raising in the US southwest, a region that was Spanish until the early 1821, when the Mexican War of Independence ended, and Mexican until 1848, when the Mexican-American War ended, which resulted in the annexation of half of Mexico’s territory by the United States.

Another name for this rope used to catch animals in English is lariat [ˈlæɹ.i.ət], a word that curiously also has a Spanish origin and which also came into English in the 19th century. It comes from the Spanish phrase la reata, which includes the feminine definite article la and the noun reata, a mostly dialectal word in Spanish today. The main meaning of Sp. reata is ‘rope, strip or belt that serves to hold some things together’ and, in particular, that used to tie rows of horses pulling on a carriage. This word is still used with the meaning of ‘rope’ in places such as Mexico, though in other American dialects it has adopted derived meanings, such as ‘cartridge belt’ in Colombia. The noun reata is derived from the verb reatar ‘to tie back/again’, derived from the verb atar ‘to tie’, derived from Lat. aptāre ‘to fasten, adapt, accommodate, fit, prepare’, a frequentative version of the verb apĕre ‘fasten; attach, connect; etc.’.[1]

From the noun lasso, English has developed the verb to lasso by conversion, meaning ‘to catch with a lasso’. Some dialects of Spanish also have a verb for this meaning, such as lazar, used in Mexico, and lacear, used in the Southern Cone of South America. Other dialects of Spanish, however, do not have a verb related to the verb lazo. In most dialects, one would probably express this meaning as coger/atrapar con un lazo, lit. ‘to catch with a lasso (rope tied in a bow)’.

Curiously, English is not the only language that has borrowed Sp. lazo with the sense of ‘lariat’. Most curiously, however, some of these loans seem to have come through English, given how common that term was in Western films that were popular all over the world after World War II. Sp. lazo was borrowed directly from Spanish by Italian, as lazo, and by Tagalog, as laso. Loaned through English, we find Czech laso, Finnish lasso, German Lasso, Hungarian lasszó and, again, Italian lasso. It seems Italian borrowed lasso through English, though it had already borrowed lazo from Spanish and although it already had three other words lasso, coming from Lat. lassus ‘weary, tired’, from Latin laxus ‘yielding, loose’, and from Latin lāpsus, perfect participle of lābī ‘to slip, flow’ (see footnote a above).

Spanish has derived another verb from this noun by prefixation, namely enlazar, this one by adding a prefix en‑ (en-laz-ar). This verb means ‘to link, connect, tie together’ and it is quite common. Derived from the verb enlazar is the zero-derived (converted) noun enlace which, not surprisingly, means ‘link’. This noun is extremely common nowadays since it has come to be used to refer to Web links or hyperlinks. Another, less common word for hyperlinks is vínculo.[2]

The opposite of enlazar is desenlazar, which thus means ‘to untie, undo’, a rare synonym of desanudar, desatar, and desligar, created by adding the reversal prefix des‑ to the verb enlazar. The intransitive version of this verb is expressed by the reflexive desenlazarse ‘to come untied/undone’. These verbs can also be used figuratively with the sense of ‘unravel, make clear’, as in Desenlazó aquel asunto con su intervención ‘She unraveled that issue with her intervention’ (GDLEL). These words are rather rare and formal, however. In literature and film, desenlazar means ‘to solve the plot of a dramatic, narrative or cinematographic work, reaching its ending’ (DLE). The verb desenlazar itself is not common, but the noun desenlace derived from it is a very common word. It can translate as outcome or result and, in the context of dramatic works, as ending or denouement. This noun is found, for instance, in the collocation desenlace feliz ‘happy ending’.

English has another cognate of Sp. lazo besides lasso, one that is much older and more common, namely lace. English borrowed this word in the early 13th century from Old French laz or las, a patrimonial cognate of Sp. lazo, also meaning ‘string, cord, noose, snare’. Until the 18th century, Eng. lace had a rather broad sense of ‘cord, string’ and ‘band, tie’ used to fasten clothes or footware, but also with the original sense of ‘snare, trap’, as well as the sense ‘cord used to support a hanging object’ (OED).

The meaning of lace somewhat more restricted today, however. It is used with two main senses. One is still the old sense ‘cord or leather strip passed through eyelets or hooks to fasten a shoe or garment’, as in shoelace, equivalent to Sp. cordón, an augmentative of the noun cuerda ‘rope’ (in Mexico, a shoelace is known as agujeta and in Peru as pasador). The other meaning of lace is ‘a fine open fabric of cotton or silk made by looping, twisting, or knitting thread in patterns, used especially as a trimming’, and derived from it, ‘braid used for trimming, especially on military dress uniforms’ (COED). This translates into Spanish as encaje or, when lace is used as a border, as puntilla. When used as a modifier, Spanish turns the noun encaje into a de phrase, as in Sp. pañuelo de encaje ‘lace handkerchief’.

English also has a verb to lace, whose main meaning is ‘fasten or be fastened with a lace or laces’ (COED), as in to lace shoes, Sp. poner cordones or, if already inserted, atar cordones. The verb acordonar, derived from cordon, can also be used with the sense ‘to tie up shoes, etc.’, but this verb has come to mean mostly ‘to cordon off’ in modern Spanish. English has had the verb lace as long as it has had the noun lace and its original source was the Old French verb lacier. The main meaning of this verb still is ‘to fasten or be fastened with a lace or laces’, though another sense, derived from it, is ‘to entwine’ (COED), which translates into Spanish as entrelazar, another verb derived from lazo or lazar, this time by means of the prefix entre‑ ‘between’ (entre‑laz‑ar). Sp. entrelazar also translates into English as to interweave, intertwine, interlace (from lace), or even lock together, interlock, or join, as in entrelazar las manos ‘to join (one’s) hands, hold hands’. Another, derived sense of this verb is quite different, however, namely ‘to add an ingredient, especially alcohol, to (a drink or dish) to enhance its flavor or strength: coffee laced with brandy’ (COED). For this latter sense, Spanish can use a verb such as añadir ‘to add’, echar ‘to dump, pour, etc.’, adulterar ‘lit. to adulterate’, or even aderezar ‘(salad) to dress; (food) to season; (fig.) embellish’, as in Aderezó el relato con detalles obscenos ‘He laced his story with salacious details’ (Harrap’s).

Spanish has a word that looks similar to lazo, namely the adjective lacio/a ‘limp, withered, straight (hair)’, which is not related to Vulgar Latin laciu or its source, Latin laceus, or even to the root laqu‑. This patrimonial adjective is derived from Latin flaccĭdus ‘flaccid, flabby, pendulous; languid, feeble, weak’, which in Old Spanish was llacio, as expected, since initial FL‑ typically became ll‑ in Old Spanish and intervocalic ‑d‑ was often lost. There is a learned cognate of this word in English, namely flaccid [ˈflæk.sɪd], which means pretty much the same thing as the Latin word, namely ‘soft and limp’ (COED). The Spanish word lacio, as you can see, has changed somewhat in meaning and in modern Spanish it is used primarily to refer to a type of hair, namely straight, non-curly hair, as in the phrase pelo lacio ‘straight hair’. Spanish also has a learned reflex of this Latin adjective, namely the learned word flácido, also less commonly fláccido, which has the same meaning as the original (and its English derivate), namely ‘flabby, limp’. This word is uncommon, however, and it is mostly used to refer to the resting state of the male sexual organ.

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[1] The first conjugation Latin verb aptāre is a frequentative version of the verb apĕre ‘fasten; attach, connect; etc.’. It is derived from the stem apt‑ of the passive participle aptus of apĕre. It had other meanings besides ‘to fasten’, such as ‘adapt, accommodate, fit’ and ‘prepare’. English and Spanish have borrowed this Latin passive participle as Eng. apt and Sp. apto/a, though French, which borrowed it from Latin first. The two words are false friends, however.

[2] Sp. vínculo is a learned, 14th century loanword from Lat. vincŭlum ‘a means of binding, fastening, band, bond, rope, cord, fetter, tie’, a word with no English cognate. Curiously, this word is a doublet of the noun brinco ‘jump’. Actually, brinco is derived from the verb brincar ‘to skip, jump, bounce’, which is a 16th century loanword from Portuguese, with the same meaning, which derived the verb from the noun brinco ‘jewel, ring’ (and eventually the name for a children’s toy that must have been a ring at first), a patrimonial noun that comes from Lat. vincŭlum. From the meaning of ‘toy’ came the derived verb brincar ‘to play’ and, eventually, ‘to jump around’, which was borrowed into Spanish. The Latin noun vincŭlum is derived from the verb vincīre ‘to bind, to bind or wind about; to fetter, tie, fasten; to surround, encircle, etc.’.

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[i] Source: De Kamil Vladislav Muttich - own work, Scan of an old postcard, Dominio público, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147193 (2018.12.31)

Eng. -age ~ Sp. -aje, Part 25: Spanish words in -aje (j): embalaje and engranaje

[This entry is an excerpt from Chapter 18, "Eng. language and Sp. lenguaje: words ending in Eng. -age and Sp. -aje", of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

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embalaje (1822) means ‘the action or result of packaging goods’ and ‘packaging materials’, e.g. reciclaje de embalajes ‘recycling of packaging materials’, el embalaje de las obras de arte es una tarea complicada ‘the packing of works of art is a complicated affair’ (VOX). The packaging that this refers to tends to be larger in size than that referred to by the noun empaquetado or empaque ‘packaging’.[1]

Sp. embalaje is said to be a 16th century loanword from Fr. emballage [ɑ̃.ba.laʒ] ‘packaging, wrapping’, a word created in the 13th century (Corominas). Note, however, that there is a Catalan cognate of this word, also from the 13th century, which may have played a role in the borrowing of the word into Spanish. Fr. emballage is derived from the verb emballer ‘to package, wrap, bale up’ by means of the suffix ‑age. Spanish also borrowed the verb embalar ‘to pack, wrap, package, bale up’ from French and derived its own antonym verb, desembalar ‘to unpack’. Spanish even derived an antonym of embalar, namely desembalar (the French equivalent is déballer: dé-ball-er), from which we get the noun desembalaje ‘the act of unpacking’.

The French verb emballer and the derived noun emballage are ultimately derived from the noun balle, by means of the prefix en‑, used in French much like in Spanish (cf. Part I, Chapter 5, §5.6.1). To that, the verbal inflections were added in the case of the verb, such as the infinitive ending ‑er, or the derivational suffix ‑age in the case of the noun: cf. en+balle+er/age. Fr. balle means several things: ‘bullet’, ‘ball’, ‘bale’, ‘chaff’, etc., since there are three different sources for this word, which should actually be seen as three separate words.

The French word balle that we are interested in, the one that means ‘large bundle, package’, was borrowed into Old French as bale from Frankish *balla ‘ball’ in the 13th century with the meaning ‘rolled-up bundle, packet of goods’ (Frankish was a West Germanic language related to English; Sp. fráncico). French balle is the Spanish word bala, not the one that means ‘bullet’, but the one that means ‘bale’, that is, ‘a large wrapped or bound bundle of paper, hay, or cotton’ (COED). More specifically, this Spanish bala is ‘tight bundle of merchandise, and especially those being shipped’ (DLE) and it is not a common word today. It is partially synonymous with the words fardo and paca. Sp. bala presumably came from Catalan in the 13th century, which came from Old French balle ‘ball’, which came from Frankish balla ‘ball’. Actually, Eng. bale is also a borrowing from French, from the early 14th century. (Eng. bale is unrelated to any of the four homophonous words bail in English.)

As we can see from the source of Fr. balle, this word is a cognate of Eng. ball, which is not a loanword, since it descends from Old English *beall or *bealla ‘round object, ball’ (cf. Old Norse bǫllr ‘ball’). Ultimately, these words go back to a reconstructed Proto-Indo-European word *bʰoln‑ ‘bubble’ derived from the Proto-Indo-European verbal root *bʰel‑ ‘to blow, inflate, swell’. All words in Romance that are cognate with this word are loanwords from Germanic, since no direct descendants of this Proto-Indo-European root exist in Latin or Romance.

As for the other word bala, the one that means ‘bullet’ or ‘projectile’, some Spanish dictionaries bundle it with the other bala that means ‘bale’ since the two come ultimately come from the same Germanic source. However, the two words came into the language at different times and through different intermediaries. The bala that means ‘bullet’ seems to come from Italian palla, meaning both ‘ball’ and ‘bullet’ (Corominas). Italian took this word from an old Germanic language of northern Italy, Lombardic (also known as Langobardic). The original Lombardic word was palla and it meant both ‘ball (to play with)’ and ‘bullet (projectile)’, which was obviously a cognate of Eng. ball, coming from the same Proto-Germanic ancestor.

Finally, let us look at Eng. bullet, which is unrelated to the other words we just saw. One might have suspected that this word is related to the word for ‘ball’, but it is not. It comes from French boulette, diminutive of boule ‘ball’, cognate of Sp. bola ‘ball’, which, again, are not related to Eng ball. These words come ultimately from Latin bŭlla ‘bubble, a swollen or bubble-shaped object’, which is thought to be a loan from Celtic that goes back to the Proto-Indo-European root *beu ‘swelling’. The Latin verb bŭllīre ‘to bubble; to boil’ is derived from this noun and is the source of Eng. boil and Sp. bullir ‘to boil, bubble up, etc.’ (the Spanish nouns bulla and bullicio both meaning ‘racket, row, ruckus’ is derived from this verb). In other words, Eng. bullet is related to Sp. bola ‘ball’, but not related to Eng. ball. Thus, the words Eng. ball and Sp. bola, which qualify as cognates using the ‘learning’ definition of the word cognate, do not qualify as cognates by using the etymological definition that we use in this book.

engranaje (1869) is a 19th century loanword from Modern French engrenage [ɑ̃.ɡʀə.ˈnaʒ], a word created in the early 18th century. The two words have the same meanings, the primary one being ‘the engagement of two or more toothed wheels’ (VOX). The word eventually also came to refer to the parts that engage in such wheels, the gears or cogs in a machine, that is to say, ‘the gear system meshing to transmit movement of one rotation shaft to another’ (GR) or ‘the set of gear wheels and parts that fit together and are part of a mechanism or a machine’ (VOX). The word engranaje is often used in the plural, as engranajes, just like English gear is often used in the plural to refer as gears, e.g. Sp. el engranaje (or los engranajes) de un reloj ‘the gears of a clock’. Note that the English noun gear is only equivalent to Sp. engranaje in this specific meaning, not the other meanings that Eng. gear has. The two words are not fully equivalent in this mechanical either. Eng. gear, for instance, has a derived sense ‘a particular setting of engaged gears: [e.g.] in fifth gear’ which translates into Spanish as marcha or velocidad, e.g. Este carro tiene cinco marchas/velocidades ‘This car has five gears’.[2]

The French noun engrenage was derived from the verb engrener [ɑ̃.ɡʀə.ˈne] which, in mechanics, means ‘to gear, mesh, engage’. The verb is quite old however, from the 12th century, and the verb was used in agriculture with the meaning ‘to feed or fill the hopper with grain’, a meaning this verb still has. The verb was formed with the prefix en‑ ‘in’ and the noun grain ‘grain’ (cf. patrimonial Sp. grano and Eng. grain, a loanword from French). This verb is not related to Eng. ingrain or engrain, though it comes from the phrase in graine, which contains the same noun graine ‘grain, seed’, actually graine d’écarlate ‘scarlet seed’, a dye.[3] Note that Fr. engrener is occasionally spelled as engrainer and pronounced [ɑ̃.ɡʀɛ.ˈne] or [ɑ̃.ɡʀe.ˈne].

It seems that the mechanical meaning of engrener arose in the mid-17th century from a mistaken corruption of an earlier adjective encrené ‘notched’, derived from the noun *cren ‘notch, indentation, slot’, which in Modern French is cran ‘notch, cut, hole (as in a belt)’ (cf. Sp. muesca, agujero). This noun is derived from the verb crener (Modern créner) that meant ‘to notch, to nick; to cut’, which is thought to come ultimately from the Latin noun crēna ‘incision, notch’, a word with a very obscure history (OED). Actually, the word crena appears in the OED, which appears to have taken it from The New Sydenham Society’s Lexicon of Medicine and the Allied Sciences (1878-1899), though it is not found in other major dictionaries of English. According to the OED, it is mostly a technical term in Botany and Zoology with the following meanings ‘an indentation, a notch; spec. in Botany one of the notches on a toothed or crenated leaf; Anatomy the depression or groove between the buttocks; the longitudinal groove on the anterior and posterior surface of the heart (New Sydenham Soc. Lexicon)’ (OED).

Spanish also borrowed the verb engranar ‘to engage, mesh, interlock’ from French engrener in the 19th century (DRAE 1884). This verb has pretty much replaced an earlier verb endentar, derived from the root dent‑ ‘tooth’ (en-dent-ar) and which is still in use with the meaning ‘engage; mesh, interlock; indent’.[4] Note that Spanish changed the middle e of the French words engrener and engrenaje to a: engranar and engranaje. This no doubt was done because of the perceived connection to the word for ‘grain’ in the original word, which in Spanish is grano.

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[1] Sp. empaquetado is a noun derived from the masculine past participle of the verb empaquetar ‘to pack, put into a package’, itself derived from the noun paquete ‘package’, a loanword from Fr. paquet, a diminutive of the Dutch pak, a cognate of Eng. pack (cf. Eng. package below). A synonym of empaquetado is the noun empaque derived by conversion from the verb empacar ‘to pack into boxes, etc.’ and ‘to bale’ (in Spanish America it also means ‘pack suitcases’, which in Spain is known as hacer las maletas.

Another word for ‘packaging’ in Spanish is envase, a noun derived from the verb envasar that means ‘to can’ when packing food into cans, ‘to bottle’ when packing liquids into bottles, and ‘to pack’ when packing things into packages or boxes. The noun envase can also translate as container and it refers primarily to the packaging that is in direct contact with the merchandise, such as a bottle or the wrapping for a product. The verb envasar, attested in the 16th century, is derived from the noun vaso ‘drinking glass’, from Vulgar Latin vasum, from Latin vās vāsis ‘a vessel, dish; also, a utensil, implement of any kind’ (L&S): en‑vas‑ar.

[2] The ‘equipment’ sense of the English noun gear translates as equipo (lit. ‘equipment’, but another sense of equipo is ‘team’), the ‘belongings’ sense translates as efectos personales, cosas, or pertenencias and the ‘clothes’ sense as ropa.

[3] Eng. engrain or ingrane originally meant ‘to dye a fabric red with cochineal or kermes’ and, later on, with any fast dye. This verb was equivalent to the phrase to dye in grain. Some point to a 16th century French verb engrainer ‘to dye’ as the source, though it is not clear what language came up with the verb first. What there is no doubt about is that it comes ultimately from the French phrase en graine ‘fast-dyed’, where graine meant ‘cochineal dye’ also known as ‘kermes’. The English verb engrain/ingrain now means ‘firmly fix or establish (a habit, belief, or attitude) in a person’ (COED). The phrase to dye in grain has been reinterpreted in English to mean ‘to impregnate the very substance of the material with the dye, to dye the wool before it is woven’, as if this grain meant something close to what the normal word grain means in English, something like ‘unprocessed fiber’.

[4] Sp. endentar means ‘to fit/gear/interlock one thing into another by means of teeth or notches’ (Sp. ‘encajar una cosa en otra por medio de dientes o muescas’, MM) as well as ‘to put teeth on a wheel’ (Sp. ‘poner dientes a una rueda’, DLE), e.g. Tengo que endentar la cadena de la bicicleta porque se ha salido ‘I have to engage the teeth of the bicycle chain because it came out’ (Clave).