carrancha
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Apparently first attested in English in 1839, in the writings of Darwin, and usually said to be from a native name imitating the bird's cry. However, compare dialectal Spanish carrancha (“dog collar with spikes”)[1] (from *carrancula), a form of carlanca (metathesized from *carcannula, from Late Latin carcannum[2]): the birds' coloration does sometimes resemble a collar.
This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term.
Noun
[edit]carrancha (plural carranchas)
References
[edit]- ^ David Pharies, Origin of the Spanish -nch- Suffixes (1994, academia.edu), mentions "And. carrancha 'mastiff collar with iron spikes', […] " (in a list of words with -nch-)
- ^ Iberoromania (in Spanish), 1994, page 33: “carrancha And. n. f. 'carlanca' (Alcalá Venceslada 1951: 136) < *carrancula, prob. a metathesized form of *carcannula < Late Latin carcannum”; see also RAE
- “carrancha”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.