adulterio

Forms

adulterio m (plural adulterios)^[1] A popular form adurterio is recorded in Murcia.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin adulterium (“adultery”), a learned word taken from Latin in the 13th century.^[3][4][5] Wiktionary instead treats it as inherited.^[1] Portuguese adultério, Catalan adulteri and French adultère (12th century) were likewise taken from Latin.^[6][7][8][9] Popular forms of the Latin word survived only in older Gallo-Romance, such as Old French avoutire and Old Occitan avouteri.^[10]

The Latin noun is formed from adulter (“adulterer”) with the suffix -ium according to the OLD.^[11] Wiktionary derives it from the verb adulterō (“to commit adultery; to falsify”) instead.^[1] The verb is perhaps from ad- and alter (“the other”), and the agent noun may in turn be a back-formation from the verb.^[11][1] Spanish has the related learned words adúltero (13th century) and adulterar (early 15th century).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest hit in the CDH is the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy), which tells of the vengeance taken por el duelo del adulteryo de Dina su ermana “for the wrong of the defilement of Dinah their sister”.^[12] The Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250) heads a chapter Del que su muger fallare en adulterio “Of him who finds his wife in adultery”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

In medieval texts the word covers illicit or sinful intercourse in general, beside the strict sense of a breach of marriage.^[2][13] The Medieval Latin word had the same broad sense of any intercourse outside marriage.^[14] Alfonso X's Estoria de España also uses it for the breaking of a law or a church commandment.^[15]

The Diccionario de Autoridades (1726) defines it as intercourse between a married woman and another man, a married man and another woman, or two married people.^[16] The Academy's dictionary of 1884 adds a legal definition, as the crime of a married woman who lies with a man not her husband, and of the man who knows she is married.^[17] The 2001 DRAE still limited it to a partner of the other sex, a restriction the current DLE has dropped; both keep the old sense “falsification, fraud”, now marked as obsolete.^[18][5]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (in a 13th-century copy) has adulteryo.^[12]
• 1218–1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes has adulterio.^[12]
• 1247 – the Fueros de Aragón have a title on adultery.^[12]
• 1255 – the Fuero Real lists it with treason and homicide.^[2]
• 1270–1284 – the Estoria de España uses it for married women and for breaches of church law.^[15]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives adulterio de casados as Latin adulterium.^[19]
• 1535 – first record from the Americas, in Cartagena.^[20]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the legal definition.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. adultery: voluntary sexual relations between a married person and someone other than their spouse.^[5][1]
2. (obsolete) falsification, fraud.^[5][18]

Related words

• adúltero
• adulterar
• adulterino
• alterar
• Latin adulterium

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. adulterio
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 323
4. ^ 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. adulterio
5. ^ a b c d 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. adulterio
6. ^ Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. 115
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. adultério
8. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. adulteri
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. adulterio
13. ^ 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. 149
14. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
15. ^ 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. adulterio
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 96
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 24
18. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. adulterio
19. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 285
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. adulterio