zorra
Portuguese
Pronunciation
- (Portugal) IPA(key): /ˈzo.ʁɐ/
- Hyphenation: zor‧ra
Etymology 1
Back-formation from zorrar.
Noun
zorra f (plural zorras)
- an old fox
- a plodder
- (colloquial, Brazil) a mess
- (colloquial, derogatory, regional) a prostitute
Spanish
Etymology
First attested in the 15th century. Of unclear origin: perhaps from an unknown pre-Roman language, or perhaps from Basque azari/azeri (“fox”) (a third suggestion, which holds that the term derives from onomatopoeia, is considered "far from convincing" and "unprovable").[1]
Pronunciation
- (Castilian) IPA(key): /ˈθora/
- (Latin America) IPA(key): /ˈsora/
Noun
zorra f (plural zorras)
- female equivalent of zorro; vixen; female fox
- (colloquial) slut, prostitute
- (colloquial) an attractive woman
- (colloquial) a cunning woman
- (colloquial) drunkenness
Synonyms
- (drunkenness): See Thesaurus:borrachera.
Further reading
- “zorra” in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014.
References
- 2012, A History of the Spanish Lexicon: A Linguistic Perspective →ISBN, page 39: "The initial attestations of Sp. zorro/zorra 'fox' are from the mid fifteenth century and appear almost exclusively in the feminine, employed in cancionero poetry, with reference to idle, immoral women (cf. mod. zorra 'prostitute'). […] DCECH may well be right in stating that zorro/zorra secondarily became a euphemistic designation for the dreaded fox (cf. raposo so used). […] The late initial documentation of zorro leads to the question [of] whether this word goes back to early Roman Spain or whether it is a later borrowing from Basque, a derivation, as noted above, challenged by Trask (1997: 421). Far from convincing is the unprovable hypothesis in DCECH that zorro goes back to a verb zorrar (whose authenticity I have been unable to verify), allegedly on onomatopoeic origin."
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