lechuza
Spanish
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Etymology tree
From Old Spanish nechuza, influenced by leche (“milk”) due to a popular belief that owls “breastfeed” human infants at night.[1]
Coromines supposes that Old Spanish nechuza developed via vowel dissimilation from an older *nochuza, a derivative of an also-unattested *nochua + -uza (as gentuza < gente), and that inherited from Latin noctua (“owl”).
Pronunciation
[edit]- IPA(key): /leˈt͡ʃuθa/ [leˈt͡ʃu.θa] (Equatorial Guinea, Spain)
- IPA(key): /leˈt͡ʃusa/ [leˈt͡ʃu.sa] (Latin America, Philippines)
Audio (Spain): (file) - Rhymes: -uθa (Equatorial Guinea, Spain)
- Rhymes: -usa (Latin America, Philippines)
- Syllabification: le‧chu‧za
Noun
[edit]lechuza f (plural lechuzas)
Coordinate terms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]References
[edit]- Coromines, Joan; Pascual, José Antonio (1984), “lechuza”, in Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico [Critical Castilian and Hispanic etymological dictionary][1] (in Spanish), volume III (G–Ma), Madrid: Gredos, →ISBN, page 617
- ^ Brodsky, Spanish Vocabulary: An Etymological Approach
Further reading
[edit]- “lechuza”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025
- “lechuza”, in Diccionario de americanismos [Dictionary of Americanisms] (in Spanish), Association of Academies of the Spanish Language [Spanish: Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española], 2010
lechuza on the Spanish Wikipedia.Wikipedia es
Categories:
- Spanish terms inherited from Old Spanish
- Spanish terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European word *nókʷts
- Spanish terms inherited from Latin
- Spanish terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- Spanish terms derived from Proto-Italic
- Spanish terms derived from Archaic Latin
- Spanish terms derived from Old Spanish
- Spanish terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *negʷ-
- Spanish terms derived from Latin
- Old Spanish terms suffixed with -uza
- Spanish 3-syllable words
- Spanish terms with IPA pronunciation
- Spanish terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:Spanish/uθa
- Rhymes:Spanish/uθa/3 syllables
- Rhymes:Spanish/usa
- Rhymes:Spanish/usa/3 syllables
- Spanish lemmas
- Spanish nouns
- Spanish countable nouns
- Spanish feminine nouns
- es:Birds