Surprising Spanish Words
By: Cecily Lawless
Tags: Language, Spanish, Words, Spanish Language, Language Learning

As languages go, Spanish tends to feel pretty regular. It’s a Romance language and it commits to the bit; most of its vocabulary comes from Latin and it tends to line up neatly in non-ambiguous, evenly-weighted syllables: where English is a windswept moor above a ragged cliff, Spanish is a well-curated trail through an sunny, open forest. While this certainly is more convenient for language-learners, it can also feel a bit uninspiring. Where do you go to get into the heart of the language, the part that makes it breathe and sing?

Luckily there are wonders in the forest; it can just take some patience and dedication to discover them. I think one place to start is with words that have slightly different origins than the rest of the pack. Quite a lot of these words will be from Arabic — extensive parts of Spain were ruled by Muslim powers from 711–1492 — but some of them are

1. Anfitrión

This word, which simply means ‘host’, is actually the name of a figure from Greek mythology: Amphitryon, a Theban general whose betrothed, Alcmene — the mother of Heracles — made him seek revenge on the Taphians for the death of her brothers. He was responsible for catching the giant Teumessian fox, which could never be caught, and set the magical dog Laelaps, which caught everything after it, and Zeus resolved the paradox by turning the creatures into the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor.

The connection to hospitality comes in with Molière, who wrote a wildly popular play about the myth that included the line: Le véritable Amphitryon est l’Amphitryon où l’on dîne (the true Amphitryon is the Amphitryon who feeds us). You can imagine that a few decades of calling someone ‘a true Amphitryon’ would eventually lead to this just being the word for a host!

2. Ojalá

Quite a few Spanish words have Arabic origins because of the Moorish presence in Spain; this is a particularly common and noticeable example. It tends to occupy a place that you associate with verbs in a sentence, but doesn’t conjugate and instead means something like ‘hopefully’ and derives from an Arabic term: if God (Allah) wills it. It’s related to a phrase which might be more familiar to English speakers — inshallah.

3. Aldea

This word means village and like most Spanish words that start with al (the Arabic word for ‘the’) it has an Arabic origin. Other perhaps-familiar examples of this phenomenon are alcatraz (a kind of bird), almoneda (an auction), albahaca (basil) alboroto (riot, excitement), almohada (a cushion), alfombra (a carpet), alquilar (to rent), algodón (cotton) and even alcohol (alcohol). Some of the words have lost the l (or rather it was never pronounced): aceite (oil), acebibe (raisin), ajonjoli (sesame).

Some words beginning with ‘al’ have Latin origins, however, like ‘almendra’ (almond) or ‘alrededor’ (surroundings).

4. Azar

Azar is another example of the ‘al’ prefix, but it deserves its own entry. It comes from the Arabic word for dice and it came to mean ‘bad luck’ or, when used as an interjection, ‘tough luck’. (Al azar, rather than being redundant, means at random). Interestingly, this is also the origin of the English word hazard!

A word that comes from the same Arabic root (which refers to flowers and prosperity) is azahar, which means ‘orange blossom’.

5. Ajedrez

The word for ‘chess’ came to Spanish from Persian through Arabic (where it was called ‘ash-shatrani’. The English word, by the way, comes pretty simply for the word ‘shah’ (king) which is pretty common in European langauges (in Russian it’s shachmati, ‘death to the king’) — so Spanish is one of the few languages where the term derives from the original name of the game itself.

6. Naranja and zanahoria

The words for ‘orange’ and ‘carrot’ respectively both stem from Arabic, as does toronja (grapefruit). So do espinaca (spinach), garbanzo (have a guess), jenabe (mustard) and lima (lime and its friend the lemon).

The typically Spanish guitarra also comes from Arabic — but its history can be traced back to the ancient Greek cithara- as does the word rincón meaning a corner or nook.

7. Bruja

The source of this word is unknown but it possibly dates back to Iberian, a non-Indo European language spoken on the Iberian peninsula before the 1st century AD or a Celtic language.

Other words that might have a Proto-Hispanic origin are perro (dog), ardilla (squirrel), zarza (bramble), calabaza (pumpkin), and galápago (turtle). Some words that probably have a Celtic origin are garza (heron) and brusco (brusque).

8. Aquelarre

Sticking with our sinister theme, this means ‘witch’s coven’ and it has a Basque origin. (So does Basque is a non-Indo-European language that was spoken on the Iberian peninsula before Latin entered the picture (and is still a living language). A really common word with Basque origins is izquierdo (left). Conejo (rabbit) might also come from the Basque, although it could also be Celtic (meaning, adorably, little dog), as may zorro (fox).

8. Problema

This word comes to Spanish from Latin but it is originally Greek. What is interesting about it is that, although it ends with the typical feminine a, like many words ending in -ma, you have to remember to say el problema (masculine). As this link explains, this is true for a lot of words that entered Latin from Greek, like el planeta, el tema, el aroma, el clima, simply because they were originally neuter. Most of the words, with exceptions like ‘lema’ (motto) have cognates in English so they aren’t too hard to remember.

Meanwhile, ‘mano’ is feminine because it derives from the fourth declension Latin noun manus and ‘día’ is masculine because it derives from the fifth declension (mostly) masculine noun ‘dies’.

9. Chocolate

No one’s going to be surprised that the word for chocolate sources from the Nahuatl language, spoken in the region where chocolate was grown, and many of the words from Nahuatl were also adopted in English. Many of the words originally ended with -atl which later became -te. Some common examples are aguacate (avocado), nopal (cactus fruit), chile, elote (white maize) mesquite, jalapeño, peyote, coyote, tecolote (owl), and ocelote (ocelot).

10. Huracán

Obviously, Nahuatl isn’t the only Native American language that Spanish borrowed from. Huracán comes from the extinct Caribbean Taíno language, which also gave origin to canoa (canoe), sabana (savannah), hamaca (hammock — the word originally meant (fishing net), papaya, and iguana. From Quechua — the language of the Incas, spoken through vast regions of South America — are words like cóndor (condor), llama (llama), cancha (a playing field), papa (potato), puma, and cura to mean a priest (you’d think it was related to ‘curate’ but it’s actually from Quechua kuraq). Jaguar comes from Guaraní — and obviously countless plants and animals indigenous to the Americas have Native American origins.