lechuza
Spanish
Etymology
The Latin word was noctua (“owl”, literally “night bird”), which would have created Old Spanish *notua or *nochuza. Lechuza apparently resulted from a cross between Old Spanish *nochuza and leche (“milk”), due to the popular belief at the time that owls came at night to give babies milk.[1]
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): (Spain) /leˈt͡ʃuθa/ [leˈt͡ʃu.θa]
- IPA(key): (Latin America) /leˈt͡ʃusa/ [leˈt͡ʃu.sa]
Audio (Spain) (file) - (Spain) Rhymes: -uθa
- (Latin America) Rhymes: -usa
- Syllabification: le‧chu‧za
Noun
lechuza f (plural lechuzas)
- owl
- barn owl (any species of owl from the Tytonidae family)
Coordinate terms
- búho
Derived terms
- lechuza común
- lechuza blanca
- lechuzo
References
- Brodsky, Spanish Vocabulary: An Etymological Approach
Further reading
- “lechuza”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014
- lechuza on the Spanish Wikipedia.Wikipedia es