bello

Forms

bello (feminine bella, masculine plural bellos, feminine plural bellas, superlative bellísimo)^[1] Old Spanish has a short form bel only before a noun, as in Berceo's bel miraclo and the bel pandero of the Libro de buen amor.^[2][3]

Etymology

Corominas takes it as borrowed from Old Occitan bel, the word of the troubadours, which goes back to Latin bellus (“pretty”).^[2][4][1] It is first recorded early in the 13th century, but is absent from the Cantar de mio Cid and other early Castilian texts, whose own words were bellido and hermoso.^[2][1] The lack of a diphthong shows that it is not a native word: inherited ⟨e⟩ would have given ⟨ie⟩, as in castiello.^[2][1] Corominas also considers a learned borrowing from Medieval Latin, but thinks it less likely, because Medieval Latin used pulcher for “beautiful”; he rejects Malkiel's view that the vowel stayed undiphthongised in proclitic use.^[2] The DLE simply derives it from bellus.^[5] The REW had taken the Spanish and Portuguese word from Italian bello.^[6]

The Latin adjective is continued in Catalan bell and French beau as well as in the Italian word, and also Portuguese belo and Galician belo.^[6][7][8] bellus is a diminutive of bonus (“good”), from Old Latin duenos: de Vaan reconstructs a diminutive *duenelos.^[9][1][10] In classical Latin it meant “pretty, charming”, chiefly of women and children.^[11][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Berceo uses it in the Vida de santo Domingo de Silos (about 1230): Nunqua omne de carne vió tan bella cosa “never did a man of flesh see so fair a thing”.^[12][2] It also occurs in the Libro de Alexandre, the Fuero Juzgo and Juan Ruiz.^[2][12] In Alfonso X's General estoria (1272–1275) a young man is de muy bella persona, “of very handsome person”.^[13]

Semantic evolution

In 1726 Autoridades defined the word as “beautiful, well proportioned and graced with special charm”, with two ironic phrases, de su bella gracia “of his own free will” and por su bella cara “for his pretty face”, said of someone who expects favour without merit.^[14] The Academy's later definitions were “beautiful, perfect of its kind” (1770–1869) and since 1884 simply “having beauty”.^[15][16] Gaspar y Roig (1853) recorded bellas artes “fine arts”, bellas letras “belles-lettres” and bello sexo “the fair sex”.^[17] The DLE adds the sense “good, excellent”, as in una bella persona “a good person”.^[5][18]

Moliner notes that in Spain, unlike Spanish America, the word is kept for elevated speech and for things of importance or great physical perfection, while everyday things are bonito.^[19]

Timeline

• c. 1230 – Berceo uses bella in the Vida de santo Domingo de Silos.^[12][2]
• c. 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre has bella cosa.^[12]
• c. 1250 – the derivative beldad appears, from Old Occitan beltat.^[4]
• 2nd quarter of the 15th century – belleza is first recorded, in Santillana.^[4][2]
• 1591 – Percyvall glosses Bello as “faire, beautifull”.^[20]
• 1625 – the first record from the Americas.^[21]
• 1726 – Autoridades gives the phrases de su bella gracia and por su bella cara.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from Latin bellus.^[16]

Meanings

Adjective

1. beautiful, fair: pleasing to the eye or the ear by the perfection of its forms, and by extension to the mind: Desde la torre se ve un paisaje muy bello.^[5][1]
2. Good, excellent, of fine moral qualities, usually before the noun: Fue un bello gesto de su parte.^[5][18]

Word family

• belleza
• bellamente
• embellecer

Related words

• beldad
• bonito
• guapo
• lindo
• precioso
• bellido
• hermoso
• Latin bellus

Usage notes

Old Spanish bello “war”, from Latin bellum, is a 15th-century Latinism of Santillana's.^[12] In Cantabria bello (also beyu, bellucu) is a calf, a word García de Diego derives from Latin vitulus.^[22][7]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 562
3. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 73
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bello
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. bello
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1027
7. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 983
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 502
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
12. ^ a b c d e 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. 512
13. ^ 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. bello
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 590
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1770), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 2nd ed., vol. I: A–B, Madrid: Joachín Ibarra, p. 1, 472
16. ^ 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. 146
17. ^ Gaspar y Roig (eds.) (1853–1855), Biblioteca ilustrada de Gaspar y Roig: Diccionario enciclopédico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Imprenta y Librería de Gaspar y Roig, p. 1, 351
18. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. bello
19. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bello
20. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 78
21. ^ 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. bello
22. ^ García-Lomas, G. Adriano (1922), Estudio del dialecto popular montañés: fonética, etimologías y glosario de voces, San Sebastián: Nueva Editorial, p. 83