abertura

Forms

abertura f (plural aberturas)^[1] Old Spanish texts also spell it auertura and avertura.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin apertūra (“opening”).^[4][1][5][6] The Latin noun was formed on the participle of aperiō (“to open”) with the suffix -ūra.^[7][8] Corominas lists it under abrir, as one of its derivatives, and Wiktionary analyses it as abierto with -ura.^[9][1]

Spanish has two later words from the same source: obertura “overture”, a music term taken from French ouverture in about 1764, and the learned apertura, taken from Latin around 1800.^[10][9]

The same Latin word is Portuguese abertura, Galician abertura, Asturian abertura, Catalan obertura and Italian apertura.^[6][5] The French word goes back to a popular variant Vulgar Latin *opertūra.^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record that Corominas's Breve diccionario dates (1220–1250) is in Berceo; the TDHLE quotes his Vida de San Millán (c. 1235): Apareció en Cielo una grant abertura, / Ixien por ella flamas grandes sobre mesura “a great opening appeared in the sky, and huge flames came out of it”.^[10][2] The sense is a gap or split in something.^[2][12]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose uses it for the act of opening, for a crack in the earth, and in geometry for the spread of a pair of compasses.^[13] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1726) defines it as an opening or break in something closed, such as a breach in a wall, and adds the act of opening, the formal opening of a congress or a competition, and the legal abertura de testamento.^[14] The Academy's 1770 edition first records the figurative sense “frankness, openness in dealings”, which the DLE now marks as rare.^[15][4]

The DLE adds technical senses in phonetics, the width of the passage the speech organs leave for the air, and in optics; for several of the senses of action the TDHLE notes that apertura is now preferred.^[4][2] In Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay abertura is the general word for the doors and windows of a building, and in Cuban tobacco work it is the opening and sorting of the leaves.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1235 – Berceo's Vida de San Millán (known from an 18th-century copy) has una grant abertura in the sky.^[2][17]
• c. 1250 – the Vidal Mayor uses it in the Aragonese legal language.^[17][12]
• 1272–1280 – the General Estoria uses it for a crack in the earth and for the act of opening.^[13]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin apertura and hiatus.^[18][19]
• 1562 – the first record from the Americas, in Yucatán.^[20]
• 1726 – Autoridades records the legal abertura de testamento.^[14]
• 1770 – the Academy adds the figurative sense “frankness”.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of opening (abrir) or of being opened.^[4][1]
2. An opening, slit or hole: Por una abertura del techo entraba la lluvia.^[4][1]
3. A crack (grieta) in the ground.^[4]
4. A broad, open stretch of land between two mountains.^[4]
5. An inlet of the sea, a cove.^[4]
6. (law) The opening of a will.^[4][14]
7. (phonetics) The width of the passage the speech organs leave for the air when a sound is made, and the quality the sound gets from it.^[4]
8. (optics) The aperture of a lens.^[4][1]
9. (rare) Frankness, openness in dealings with others.^[4][15]

Related words

• abrir
• apertura
• obertura
• Latin apertūra
• English aperture

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. abertura
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. abertura
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. abertura
5. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 574
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
9. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 22
10. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. abrir
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
12. ^ a b Alonso Pedraz, Martín (1986), Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, 2 vols., Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, p. 33
13. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. abertura
14. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 10
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1770), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 2nd ed., vol. I: A–B, Madrid: Joachín Ibarra, p. 10
16. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. abertura
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. abertura
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 281
19. ^ 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. abertura
20. ^ 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. abertura