The origin of "Las herramientas"?

Question

Here's a question for the highly educated: What is the etymology of "herramientas"? In French, the word for tools is "outils." Translated into English it relates to "utilitarian" or "usefulness". So what is the Spanish origin of the term?

Answer 1

You don´t have to be highly educated at all. Just look up the word in the RAE and you will find that the origin is latin.

herramienta.

(Del lat. ferramenta, pl. n. de ferramentum).

1. f. Instrumento, por lo común de hierro o acero, con que trabajan los artesanos.

2. f. Conjunto de estos instrumentos.

3. f. coloq. Arma blanca, puñal, navaja, faca.

4. f. coloq. Cuernos de algunos animales, como el toro y el ciervo.

5. f. coloq. Dientes de la boca de una persona o de un animal.

6. f. ant. herraje1.

? V.

máquina herramienta

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Are you kidding Julian? I didn't even know what RAE meant until I got to the bottom of your answer. Gives you an idea where I'm at compared to y'all. - GaryT, May 17, 2012

Answer 2

Ferrum is Latin for iron, and words in Latin, Italian, and sometimes French that start with F often start with H in Spanish. (Hierro, hermano, harina) Maybe that's how Castillians originally pronounced the F sound. And the suffix -mienta is a suffix used to to group together nouns collectively, like the -ment in the English "armament." Anyway, I think this is why it's called herramienta in Spanish: it's something like iron-ment, those things made of iron.

thanks . always wondered why "farine" became "harina" - marineroloco, May 17, 2012

Thanks for the info! Learning things like this is why I study languages. - GaryT, May 17, 2012