• duende •
Pronunciation: du-en-day • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. (Mass noun) Irresistible charm, personal magnetism, charisma, especially in flamenco. 2. (Countable noun) A Portuguese or Spanish version of the leprechaun, a magical goblin that haunts houses and creates mischief.
Notes: Here is a Spanish word not often heard or read, but known to sophisticated writers, so we bump into it now and again. The question is, how did the meaning shift so far, from "mischievous goblin" to "charisma"? (See Word History.) Duende is a lexical orphan.
In Play: In English duende is used exclusively in its abstract sense: "Antonio radiates duende when he does a jazz riff on his saxophone." However mythological, the physical sense remains: "As the bellhop showed me to my room at the tiny hotel in the Spanish village, he told me that the hotel was haunted by a mischievous duende."
Word History: Today's Good Word was hijacked from Spanish, where it is believed to derive from the phrase 'dueño de casa' "master, lord of a house". In 1933 the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca claimed in an essay delivered in Bueno Aires entitled 'Juego y Teoría del Duende' "Play and Theory of the Duende", that duende involves irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death, and a dash of the diabolical. Lorca was depending on the Spanish dialects, where the word had already taken on the meaning "magic, charm". Dueño descended from Latin dominus "lord, master", created from PIE dem-/dom- "to build, house", as seen in Greek domos "house", Latin domus "house", and Polish and Russian dom "house, home", but less obvious in Sanskrit damah "house", Armenian tun "house", Albanian dhoma "room", and English timber. (Now a big thank-you to George Kovac, hyperactive Agoran and Wordmaster suggesting many, many splendid Good Words like today's.)
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