We know how ‘crust of bread’ to the piece of dry bread that no one wants. Etymologically, the term comes from Hispanic Arabic. Momṭruq (ar. cl. Momṭrūq: ‘touched, manipulated’), applied to broken bread or leftover bread, which in the Romance language would have given medrugo. Use was associated with ‘beggar’s bread’ and, by phonetic and semantic crossing with beggaradded the n and consolidated the pejorative nature of the word mendrogo in Spanish.
We can see that in many medieval texts, the form “mendrogo” was already used to designate “leftover bread”, and that in modern times (from the 15th century), the term was associated with poverty. Antonio de Nebrija describes it as ‘panis emendicatus’ (beggar’s bread either begged bread) and Sebastián de Covarrubias as ‘piece of bread offered to beggars’.
Over the years, bread crust He went from calling hard bread to insulting those who are hard-headed. The metaphor of dry bread has been applied to clumsiness and, since its 1992 edition, the RAE has incorporated the meaning: ‘rude, imbecile, idiot man’.
Enjoy other curiosities like this in Alfred López’s book: “It’s VERY CURIOUS”
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