cofín

See also: cofin

Spanish

Etymology

To be put together with Catalan cofí and French coffin, couffin. Unclear relations.

1. the Spanish and Catalan have been considered borrowed from Arabic قُفَّة (quffa, “basket”), also present in Spanish cofa, Catalan cofa, Portuguese alcofa, which borrowing would have to be suffixed +‎ -ín;
2. or they may be borrowed from a faulty Medieval Latin pronunciation of Latin cophinus where the penultimate syllable is stressed, contrary to antiquity, and thus a doublet of cuévano;
3. or Old French cofin (“basket”) borrowed perhaps via Old Occitan coffin from Latin cophinus (the inherited Old French form is cofre whence Spanish cofre) gave rise to the word in Catalan and Spanish – just as it went into English coffin –, which would explain the stress. However on the contrary the likeness of the French word may be the effect of it having been borrowed from Latin cophinus or from the Old Occitan word in turn borrowed from this Latin or suffixed from that Arabic.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /koˈfin/ [koˈfĩn]
• Rhymes: -in
• Syllabification: co‧fín

Noun

cofín m (plural cofines) (rare)

1. basket

References

• Corriente, Federico (2008) “alcofa”, in Dictionary of Arabic and Allied Loanwords. Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician and Kindred Dialects (Handbook of Oriental Studies; 97), Leiden: Brill, →ISBN, page 85

Further reading

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