Brujería

For other uses, see Brujería (disambiguation).
"Bruja" redirects here. For other uses, see Bruja (disambiguation).

Brujería is the Spanish-language word for "witchcraft". Brujería also refers to witch-healers in the Americas (especially Latin America and the United States). Both men and women can be witches; brujo(s) and bruja(s), respectively.

Etymology

There is no sound etymology for this word, which appears only in Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, and Galician (other romance languages use words derived from Latin strix, -igis, originally an owl). The word may be inherited from a Celtiberian substrate or it may derive from the Latin plusscius, -a, um (> plus + scius),[1] a hapax attested in the Cena Trimalchionis, a central part in Petronius' Satyricon.[2] Pluscia could have arisen from rhotacization of the /l/ and voicing of the /p/, pluscia> pruscia> bruscia> bruxa (Portuguese)> bruja (Spanish).[3]

In popular culture

See also

References

  1. ↑ Oxford Latin Dictionary, Oxford. Clarendon Press: 1968
  2. ↑ "sunt mulieres plusciae, sunt nocturnae",63.9
  3. ↑ Ali, Said, Investigações Filológicas, 1975, pag. 275

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, December 07, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.