cascabel

cascabel

English

WOTD – 1 February 2013, 1 February 2015

Various cultivars of Capsicum annuum, the cascabel chili pepper.

Decorated cascabel (knob at the end of a cannon).

Etymology

From Spanish cascabel (“bell, rattle”).

Pronunciation

• (General American, Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkæskəbɛl/

  • Audio (UK)

    (file)

• Hyphenation: cas‧ca‧bel

Noun

cascabel (plural cascabels)

1. A small, round, hot variety of chili pepper, Capsicum annuum, which rattles when dry.
   • 1984, Jean Andrews, Peppers: The Domesticated Capsicums‎, published 1995, page 100:

     The very pungent Mexican Cascabel looks a lot like the Cherry pepper when it is growing. […] In the dry state the skin becomes translucent and the seeds are loose so that they rattle, hence cascabel, which means sleigh or jingle bells. Another cultivar, the elongate Catarina, is often called Cascabel because its dry seeds also make a noise within its translucent dry skin.

   • 1997, Didi Emmons, Vegetarian Planet: 350 Big-Flavor Recipes for Out-Of-This-World Food Every Day‎, page 415:

     Cascabels are available dried in Latin American markets. Hot and nutty in flavor, cascabels are good in sauces, beans, and chilis.

   • 2004, Rick Greenspan, Hal Kahn, The Leave-No-Crumbs Camping Cookbook‎, page 94:

     Prepare the cascabels using one of the methods in the Preparing Cascabels box, at left.

2. A knob at the end of a cannon, cast onto the gun breech, to which a heavy rope is attached in order to control recoil.
   • 1862, Samuel Kneeland, George Bliss, David Ames Wells, William Ripley Nichols, Charles Robert Cross, John Trowbridge, editor, Year-Book of Facts in Science and Art‎, page 91:

     The cascabel, instead of being permanently attached to the breech of the piece, is set into it by means of a screw, and thus in reality the bore extends the entire distance of the gun, so that when the cascabel is taken off one can look directly through the gun.

   • 2011, Roy F Sullivan, The Texas Revolution: Tejano Heroes‎, page 137:

     This iron cannon with a single muzzle band, without trunnions and with an oversized cascabel is believed by many to be the original “Come and Take It” cannon and is displayed at the Gonzales Memorial Museum and occasionally elsewhere within Texas.

   • 2011, Chris Messner, Cuba Open from the Inside: Travels in the Forbidden Land‎:

     I was looking at a 151 mm caliber cannon, which used the twentyfour pound cannon ball and displayed a beautiful lion′s head on the back end of its breach area. An elaborate cascabel stuck out of the mouth of each animal. The cascabel was primarily used to attach ropes that secured the cannon during the recoil blowback that came from firing.

3. A bell attached to a sleigh or sleigh harness.

Synonyms

• (pepper): chile bola, bola chile, rattle chile, coban
• (bell attached to a sleigh): jingle bell

Translations

variety of chili pepper

Finnish: cascabel (fi), cascabel-chili Portuguese: cascavel (pt) f

knob at the end of a cannon

Finnish: nuppi (fi) Hebrew: תַּפּוּחַ הַמִּכְנָס‎ m (tapuakh hamikhnas) Portuguese: cascavel (pt) m

bell attached to a sleigh

Finnish: aisakello, kulkunen (fi) Portuguese: guizo (pt) m Tagalog: pakasing, kaskabel

Anagrams

• accables, cascable

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Galician

Etymology 1

Attested since de 14th century. From Old Occitan cascavel, ultimately from Latin caccabus.[1] Cognate with Portuguese cascavel and Spanish cascabel.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kaskaˈβɛl/

Noun

cascabel m (plural cascabeis)

1. jingle bell; rattle
   • 1370, R. Lorenzo (ed.), Crónica troiana. A Coruña: Fundación Barrié, page 604:

     Et andauã en el trezentos cascauees d'ouro, que desçendí[ã] ata os pees do caualo et ý[ã] fazendo grã rroýdo sobeiament.

     And he [a horse] was wearing three hundred gold jingle bells, that fell till the feet of the horse and were making a large noise, haughtily

   Synonyms: arouxo, axóuxere

Etymology 2

Folk etymology from cascamelo, a diminutive of cálsamo.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kaskaˈβɛl/

Noun

cascabel m (plural cascabeis)

1. common groundsel (Senecio vulgaris)

   Synonyms: calsamiña, cálsamo, casamelo

References

• “cascavel” in Dicionario de Dicionarios do galego medieval, SLI - ILGA 2006–2022.
• “cascauees” in Xavier Varela Barreiro & Xavier Gómez Guinovart: Corpus Xelmírez - Corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval. SLI / Grupo TALG / ILG, 2006–2018.
• “cascabel” in Dicionario de Dicionarios da lingua galega, SLI - ILGA 2006–2013.
• “cascabel” in Tesouro informatizado da lingua galega. Santiago: ILG.
• “cascabel” in Álvarez, Rosario (coord.): Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués, Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega.

1. Joan Coromines; José A. Pascual (1983–1991), “cascabel”, in Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (in Spanish), Madrid: Gredos

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Spanish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kaskaˈbel/ [kas.kaˈβ̞el]
• (Castilian)

  Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -el
• Syllabification: cas‧ca‧bel

Etymology 1

Un cascabel de cobre. (A copper jingle bell).

From Old Occitan cascavel, from Vulgar Latin cascābellus (“small bell”), diminutive of cascābus, from Latin cāccabus.

Influenced by Latin quassicāre, based on Latin quassāre, present active infinitive of quassō (“to shake repeatedly, to quake”), because when the chili is being prepared, the seeds make a rattling noise when the pepper is dried.

Noun

cascabel m (plural cascabeles)

1. jingle bell, sleigh bell
2. (Chile) rattle (baby's toy)

   Synonyms: sonaja, sonajero

3. knob of a cannon
4. cascabel (chili)

Derived terms

• hecho un cascabel
• ponerle el cascabel al gato
• serpiente de cascabel

 

Related terms

• cascar
• cascabelear

Descendants

• English: cascabel

Etymology 2

Short for serpiente de cascabel (“rattlesnake”) or culebra de cascabel (“rattlesnake”).

Noun

cascabel f (plural cascabeles)

1. rattlesnake

   Synonyms: crótalo, serpiente de cascabel, culebra de cascabel

Further reading

• “cascabel”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014