óbito

Forms

óbito m (plural óbitos)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin obitus (“a going down; end; death”), a learned word.^[2][3][1] Vox dates the borrowing to the 19th century.^[4] The Latin noun was derived from obeō (“to go towards; to die”), a compound of ob- (“towards”) and eō (“to go”), the verb that Spanish continues as ir.^[2][1][4] Besides “death”, the Latin noun meant an arrival or visit and the setting of the stars.^[5] In Medieval Latin it also meant the anniversary mass for a dead person, the sense of French obit.^[6][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest dated record in Boyd-Bowman's material is from Guatemala in 1711, on the services held at the deaths (óbitos) of the superiors general of a religious order.^[7] The BDELC dates the word to 1843, the year it entered the Academy's dictionary.^[2][8] The DICCA-XV gives 1492 as its own first date and 1310 for the older Academy corpus, without quoting the texts.^[9]

Semantic evolution

When the Academy first recorded the word in 1843 it called it a term of the courts and of religious communities.^[8] In 1899 it added that it was little used outside those circles.^[10] The register has stayed the same: Moliner calls it a judicial and ecclesiastical word for death, and Vox a formal one.^[11][4] An Uruguayan document of 1798 already uses it in a matter of inheritance, and in medical Mexican Spanish of 1987 it is used of a dead foetus.^[7]

Timeline

• 1711 – a Guatemalan document uses it for the death of the superiors of a religious order.^[7]
• 1798 – an inheritance record from Uruguay has it, spelt hóvito.^[7]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary first records it, as a legal and monastic word.^[8]
• 1899 – the Academy gives the etymology, from obitus and obire “to die”.^[10]
• 1987 – a Mexican medical text uses óbito fetal.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. (formal, legal, ecclesiastical) The death of a person, decease (defunción): El certificado de óbito llegó al juzgado.^{[3][11][4][1]}

Word family

• obituario

Related words

• ir
• Latin obitus
• English obituary

Usage notes

In medicine óbito fetal is the death of the foetus before birth.^[7][12]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. óbito
3. ^ a b Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. óbito
4. ^ a b c d Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. óbito
5. ^ a b Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 221
6. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
7. ^ a b c d e f Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. óbito
8. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 504
9. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. óbito
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 703
11. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. óbito
12. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. óbito