As the days heat up, perhaps you might end up suffering from a “calenture.”

calenture — a fever supposedly caused by heat, especially tropical heat

calentura — the Spanish cognate of the same meaning

We took our word from the Spanish word. The Spanish word, in turn, came from Latin’s calere which means “to be warm.”

I came upon the English word in an older piece of literature in which the person was suffering from, or perhaps died from (I don’t recall which), a “calenture.” I wasn’t familiar with the word, but I immediately knew it had to do with “heat” because I have long known the Spanish word “calor” for “heat.”

If you want to say “I’m hot” while fanning yourself (as opposed to telling someone you’re a sexy beast — that would involve the word “caliente”), you would say “Tengo calor,” which translates literally to “I have heat.” If you want to say that “it’s hot out today” you would say “hace calor hoy.”

When I was teaching, I would equate the word “calor” with the English word of “calorie” and remind my students that a “calorie” is a unit of “heat.” That way, they would easily remember the word “calor” for “heat.” The Spanish word for “calorie” is “caloría,” but it wasn’t a word I used much in my classes — “calor” most definitely was, though.

In regards to the cognate duo, merriam-webster.com only offers a definition in which the “fever” affected sailors in the tropics, and they add this tidbit:

In addition to being plagued by scurvy and homesickness, sailors of yore who dared the tropics also had calenture to worry about. Given a case of this fever they were likely to imagine that the sea was actually a green field and to leap into it.

That’s one way to cool off from a fever, I guess, but it most likely led to their deaths.

We use a “caldron” (or “cauldron” as we more commonly spell it) to heat up, cook, or boil a large quantity of liquid. This word is “caldera” in Spanish, and it is also the word for a “boiler.”

In English, we also have the word “caldera,” but it’s for a very specific geographical feature that forms where the central part of volcano has collapsed. There’s a lot of “heat” in a volcano! I’ll let merriam-webster.com explain this:

A large, bowl-shaped volcanic depression, a caldera forms when the top of a volcanic cone collapses into the space left after magma is ejected during a violent volcanic eruption. Its diameter is many times that of the original vent. The term is Spanish for "caldron." Subsequent minor eruptions may build small cones on the floor of the caldera, and the caldera may still later fill up with water; an example of this is Crater Lake in Oregon.

Something that might get cooked in a “caldera” is a “caldo.” That word translates usually to “broth.” Clearly, there is no similarity between the Spanish and English words, and that is because “broth” comes to us straight from Old English. While the word “sopa” is the more commonly used and much more generic word for “soup” in Spanish, the word “caldo” often takes on that sense, too. I’ve seen many menus that offer “caldo de pollo” — chicken soup — “caldo de res” — beef soup — and others.

If you throw the “caldo” on someone, though, you could “scald” him. See that “cald” inside that word? Yep, our word “scald” is related to all these other words dealing with heat. That Spanish verb is “escaldar.”

Perhaps if those sailors in the tropics had been fed a nourishing “caldo,” they wouldn’t have been as likely to leap into the ocean as a result of their “calenturas.”

Until next time. Stay out of the heat if you’re prone to “calentures.” This is the free post for June. Upgrade to “paid” to receive these posts more frequently than monthly. Paid subscribers also receive the audio recording of each post and have full access to the archive of almost 300 past posts.

Tammy Marshall

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