alarguez

Spanish

Alternative forms

• alarguiz, alguese

Etymology

Borrowed from Andalusian Arabic أَرْغِيس (ʔarḡīs, “barberry”), a borrowing from Berber where arḡīs has been the bark of the root of barberry – azarġīnt the plant –, still present in the same form in Moroccan Arabic and Berber dialects.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (Spain) /alaɾˈɡeθ/ [a.laɾˈɣ̞eθ]
• IPA^(key): (Latin America, Philippines) /alaɾˈɡes/ [a.laɾˈɣ̞es]
• Rhymes: -eθ
• Rhymes: -es
• Syllabification: a‧lar‧guez

Noun

alarguez m (plural alargueces) (archaic)

1. barberry (Berberis vulgaris)

   Synonyms: agracero, agracejo

2. rosewood, princewood (the slightly aromatic wood of Cordia gerascanthus)

   Synonyms: palo de rosas, palo de águila

Further reading

• “alarguez”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10
• Corriente, F. (1997) A Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East; 29)‎^[1], Leiden, New York, Köln: Brill, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 11
• Corriente, Federico (2008) “alarguez”, in Dictionary of Arabic and Allied Loanwords. Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician and Kindred Dialects (Handbook of Oriental Studies; 97), Leiden: Brill, →ISBN, page 53
• Corriente, Federico, Pereira, Christophe, Vicente, Angeles, editors (2017), Dictionnaire du faisceau dialectal arabe andalou. Perspectives phraséologiques et étymologiques (in French), Berlin: De Gruyter, →ISBN, page 30
• Dozy, Reinhart Pieter Anne, Engelmann, Wilhelm Hermann (1869) Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais, dérivés de l’arabe‎^[2] (in French), 2^nd edition, Leiden: E. J. Brill, page 57
• Meouak, Mohamed (2015) La langue berbère au Maghreb médiéval: Textes, contextes, analyses (in French), Leiden: Brill, →ISBN, page 91