Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de

Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastin de

Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastin de, b. Jan. 7,

1539, Toledo, Spain, d. 25 June, 1613, Cuenca, Spain; lexicographer, founder of Spanish monolingual lexicography, whose Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espaÇola (1611) has deeply influenced the history of Hispanic lexicography. After studying in Toledo and Salamanca, C. was appointed Canon of Cuenca Cathedral and fulfilled his duties there until the day of his death. His Tesoro is, in effect, the first general monolingual dictionary ever published. Before C.+s Tesoro we only find repertoires on specific topics and short glossaries which, in general, remained unprinted manuscripts. Likewise unprinted was the Diccionario etimolgico by F. del Rosal (1601), which is the only comparable precedent. C.+s initial purpose was to draw up an etymological repertoire. Surrounded by the linguistic controversies of the period and by the nationalist struggle that drove many authors to defend the purity and antiquity of their own language, C. sided with those who defended the Hebraic origin of Spanish. As a result of this stance, it is precisely the etymological aspects of the Tesoro that are now considered to be its most unfortunate feature. The belief that something of the essence of the named thing can be found in the words, blurs the distinction between the lexicographic presentation of the content of the word and the presentation of the reality that it represents. The complexity of this approach, together with the rather lax methodology typical of C.+s personality, leads to great variety in the nature and function of the numerous authors who appear in the pages of the Tesoro. Countless authors—scholarly or didactic, classical and modern—and countless literary texts in Latin, Spanish and other languages, figure in the different entries of the dictionary. According to Seco (1987), the goal of these didactic and literary quotations is, on the one hand, encyclopedic (information about things) and, on the other, linguistic (information on the origin of words). C. is believed to have begun the writing of the Tesoro when he was quite old, because it can be dated between 1606 and 1610. He wrote the dictionary in sequential order, so mistakes can be found in the order, and some contradictions and repetitions within the entries. C. quickened the pace of work starting from letter C., a point from which the explanations become less prolix. Although the eleven thousand entries of the Tesoro may seem a modest total, in fact the words defined amount to a far higher number. C.+s main task was to discover the origin of all words and to define them. However, there are many encyclopedic explanations to be found within the entries. Once the writing was fin-

ished, C. undertook the task of elaborating a Suplemento which was supposedly written in 1612. The handwritten Suplemento is still extant, bearing a long title which tells its own history. Within a macrostructure that is essentially encyclopedic, C.+s Suplemento adds a significant number of new words, while enhancing the etymological, semantic and phraseological information offered. Despite his evident negligence in certain details of lexicographic technique, C. always shows great receptivity towards any deviations from the standard language, especially in colloquial and regional speech. Beginning with the second edition (1673–74), the Tesoro was published with the often infelicitous additions of Father Benito Remigio Noydens. Another attempt to develop the Tesoro was undertaken by Ayala Manrique, whose first volume is known only up to the letter C.; scholars know neither the whereabouts of the other volumes, nor even whether they ever existed. C.+s Tesoro became an essential source for subsequent lexicographers and was used, for example, by C. fi Oudin (1616), fi Franciosini (1629), fi M;nage (1650), fi Richelet (1680), fi Fureti