“Origen de la comparación «Como el gallo de Morón, sin pluma y cacareando»”, Paremia, 25 (2016), 183-196.

This comparative phrase, attested since 1711 or 1713, was created by the second half of the 17th century. It includes the figurative senses of feather as ‘money’ and of clucking as ‘screaming repeatedly’ like a hen, which are frequently used in the Spanish language of the Golden Age, and it compares a man with a plucked rooster. The rooster of Moron, who in addition clucks, obeys the fact that it is metrically equivalent to the rooster of Plato, with whom those losing their feather or money were compared in 1624, as well as to its phonetic similarity with the hen of Monzon and with the rooster and the maron (‘sturgeon’) of two ancient proverbs. The historical legends forged after 1890 have little to do with the true meaning of the phrase, since the protagonist is a person instead of a plucked rooster as that shown in the bronze statue of Morón de la Frontera since 1916, and they mistake the feather for the ‘clothes’, and the clucking for the rooster’s arrogant ‘crowing’.