anticuario

Forms

anticuario (feminine anticuaria, masculine plural anticuarios, feminine plural anticuarias)^[1] The older spelling was antiquario, common until the 18th century;^[1] antiguario, influenced by antiguo, is in Minsheu (1617), and Judeo-Spanish has anticario.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin antīquārius (“a student of the past; a copyist of old books”), a learned word.^[3][1][2] The Latin word is antīquus (“old, ancient”) with the suffix -ārius.^[1][4] In Classical Latin the noun named a lover of antiquity;^[4][5] Tacitus and Suetonius use it.^[4][5] In late and medieval Latin it also meant a scribe who copied old books, a sense Du Cange illustrates from Isidore.^[6][7]

The word has the same Latin source as antiguo, which is inherited, and anticuar.^[1][8] Catalan antiquari and French antiquaire are the same borrowing.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first example in the TDHLE is in Alfonso de Palencia's Universal vocabulario (1490), in the medieval sense of copyist: los nueuos libros escriuían los librarios, & los antiguos los antiquarios “the librarians copied new books, and the antiquarians the old ones”.^[2] Segura Munguía dates the word from the beginning of the 17th century.^[9]

Semantic evolution

From the late 16th century the word names a student of antiquities, especially of archaeological remains.^[2] Antonio Agustín (died 1586) speaks in his dialogues on medals of what todos los antiquarios have noted, and Sigüenza (1605) gives the name to those who unearthed the remains of ancient buildings.^[2] The spelling with -cu- appears in 1626, in Pedro Espinosa, and antiquario remains common into the 18th century.^[2] Terreros (1786) defines the word as a man who studies the monuments left by antiquity.^[10] Domínguez (1846) adds a colloquial sense, a pedant attached to old language and old things, and an old sense “archivist”.^[11] By 1888 Mélida could say that the antiquarian as a scholar had been replaced by the arqueólogo.^[2]

Meanwhile the word came to mean a collector of antiques, from 1833 in Mesonero Romanos, and then a dealer.^[2][12] Alemany (1917) gives it a feminine form, anticuaria.^[13] The sense “antique shop” is recent: the DLE has it, and an example from Cuba of 1966 speaks of entering an anticuario.^[3][14]

Timeline

• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia uses antiquarios for copyists of old books.^[2]
• before 1586 – Antonio Agustín uses antiquarios for students of antiquities.^[2]
• 1617 – Minsheu records the form antiguario.^[2]
• 1626 – Pedro Espinosa writes anticuarios.^[2]
• 1786 – Terreros defines the word as a student of ancient monuments.^[10]
• 1833 – Mesonero Romanos uses it for a collector of antiques.^[2]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary defines it as a person who studies ancient things.^[15]
• 1880 – first records in the Americas, in Mexico.^[14]
• 1917 – Alemany gives the feminine anticuaria.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person who collects or deals in antiques (antigüedades); an antique dealer: Le vendió el reloj a un anticuario del barrio.^[3][12]
2. An antiquarian: a specialist in the knowledge and study of ancient things.^[3][1]
3. (masculine) An antique shop.^[3][1]

Adjective

1. Antiquarian; relating to antiquities.^[1][16]

Related words

• anticuar
• antiguo
• antigüedad
• arqueólogo
• Latin antīquārius

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. anticuario
3. ^ a b c d e 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. anticuario
4. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
7. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre
8. ^ a b Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 357
9. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 47
10. ^ a b Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 1, 115
11. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 136
12. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. anticuario
13. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 133
14. ^ a b 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. anticuario
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 51
16. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org