Trillas/Trillos

[deandddd]

People,

Remember the expression "por las trillas de Ubeda"?

Trillas or trillos?

Dictionary research has been confusing.

Dean

[aleCcowaN]

I don't know such phrase but "por los cerros de Úbeda", meaning "lost in your thoughts", a bit of "disconnected from the world", but never "aloof", "dissociated" nor "despondent".

"Trillo" or "trilla" is what I called "picada" (I asked about it in a previous thread). They are regional terms for "trocha" and they imply a path made through the thicket or tall grasses, not by planning and intentional labouring but just by walking or driving a vehicle over the same path once and again, knocking down the vegetagion and compacting the soil, depriving it from aireation until nothing can spring or grow on it.

As "trilla"or "trillo" are the result of "trillar", to thresh, and being corn (AmE) the corn (BrE) in the Caribbean Rim, and threshing maize implies starting by knocking down the stalks, resembling the same kind of "trocha" we were talking about, the use of "trilla"or "trillo" as "trocha" is explained.

I imagine people living in plains without a "cerro" in sight may have adapted the original phrase, "to lose yourself por los cerros de Úbeda" to "losing yourself por los trillos/trillas de Úbeda", changing wolves and bears for jaguars.

In the thicket, the roughly thicket
The jaguar sleeps tonight...

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Like Alec, I have heard "por los cerros de Úbeda".
Yet, about your question, the RAE dictionary says "trillo" may be the path or the instrument to make it, but "trilla" is only the instrument, so I'd say it's "por los trillos de Úbeda", unless the common usage says otherwise.

[deandddd]

AleCcowan, Angela,

My mistake. I got trillos and cerros mixrd up.

But still, it is nice to know that trillo means a path. We say the word trail in English.

Later!