catorce

Forms

catorce^[2] Old Spanish wrote catorze, quatorze, catorse, catorçe and catorce.^[3][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish catorze (also quatordze), inherited from Latin quattuordecim (“fourteen”).^[4][5][2][1] Gómez de Silva gives the intermediate Vulgar Latin *quattordece, and the DHLF also starts the Romance forms from a popular Latin variant without the ⟨u⟩.^[6][7]

The same Latin numeral is Portuguese catorze, Catalan catorze, Occitan quatorze, French quatorze and Italian quattordici.^[8][7][9]

The Latin numeral is formed from quattuor (“four”) and decem (“ten”).^[10][1][11] Corominas treats the word under cuatro, with the other words of that numeral.^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word from 1187, from the list of early charters compiled by Oelschläger, and DEMel's first record of that year is in the Mozarabic documents of Toledo; a document of Palencia cathedral has it in 1214.^[4][5][3] The earliest literary text in the CDH is the Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250, in an early 15th-century copy): De los catorze años aún los dos le menguavan “of fourteen years he still lacked two”.^[12] A treaty of 1244 between the Muslim king of Valencia and the master of the Order of Santiago already spells it catorce: catorce mill sueldos de Jaqueros “fourteen thousand shillings of Jaca”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The numeral has kept the sense “fourteen” throughout.^[2][12] In medieval law it was the age at which a boy or girl could bear witness, as the Fuero Juzgo laid down, a passage the Diccionario de Autoridades quotes in 1729.^[13][12] As an ordinal it is found early in the Americas: a Puerto Rican text of 1519 speaks of el catorce capítulo “the fourteenth chapter”.^[14] The Academy first described this ordinal use, as in Luis catorce and with the days of the month, in 1884.^[15]

Card games gave it special senses: in the game of cientos a set of four aces, kings and similar cards, recorded by Gaspar y Roig in 1853, and in báciga a hand of two pairs.^[16][17] The DLE now also records the feminine plural las catorce for two o'clock in the afternoon.^[2] In Colombia it is a popular word for a favour, and in Honduras and Nicaragua it has a vulgar sense.^[18] In Granada el Catorce was the name for the mental asylum.^[19] Spanish catorce was borrowed into Cebuano and Tagalog as katorse.^[1]

Timeline

• 1187 – first record, in the Mozarabic documents of Toledo.^[4][5][3]
• 1214 – a document of the cathedral of Palencia.^[3]
• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre has catorze años.^[12]
• 1244 – a treaty with the king of Valencia spells catorce.^[12]
• c. 1250 – Alfonso X's Lapidario has fasta catorze dias “for fourteen days”.^[20][12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Catorze numero with the Latin quattuordecim.^[21][22]
• 1519 – ordinal use in Puerto Rico: el catorce capítulo.^[14]
• 1611 – Covarrubias, under the spelling catorze, explains it as four and ten.^[23]
• 1729 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it and derives it from Latin quatuordecim.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy first records the ordinal use and the figure 14.^[15]

Meanings

Numeral

1. fourteen: ten plus four.^[2][1]
2. fourteenth (as an ordinal, after the noun), also of the days of the month: el capítulo catorce, el catorce de mayo.^[2][24]

Noun

1. The number fourteen, which follows thirteen (trece).^[2]
2. The figure or set of signs that stands for this number, 14.^[2]
3. (feminine plural, las catorce) Two o'clock in the afternoon.^[2]
4. (card games) In báciga, a hand of two pairs.^[17]
5. (Colombia, popular) A favour.^[18]

Word family

• catorceno
• catorzavo

Related words

• cuatro
• diez
• decimocuarto
• Latin quattuordecim

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 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. catorce
3. ^ a b c d Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 261
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuatro
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 5341
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ 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. 650
12. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 233
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
15. ^ 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. 227
16. ^ 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, 523
17. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos
18. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer
19. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 144
20. ^ 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. catorce
21. ^ 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
22. ^ 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
23. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 461
24. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial