ciento

Forms

ciento m (plural cientos)^[1] Old Spanish has ciento, çiento, the shortened cient and çient, and cien.^[2] Before a noun the form is cien (cien años); ciento is used before another numeral (ciento veinte).^[3][4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin centum (“hundred”).^[6][7][8][1] Old Spanish ciento had the same form, beside a shortened cient.^[6][2] The proclitic cien is the shortened form used before nouns.^[5] The same Latin word is Portuguese cento, Galician cento, Catalan cent, French cent and Italian cento, and Mozarabic chento is the Mozarabic form.^[5][9]

The Latin numeral goes back to Proto-Italic *kəntom and Proto-Indo-European *ḱm̥tóm, which de Vaan writes *dḱmtom.^[1][10] Its cognates include Ancient Greek ἑκατόν (hekatón), Sanskrit शत (śata), Old Church Slavonic съто (sŭto) and Old English hund, the source of English hundred.^[10][1] Gómez de Silva explains the PIE word as a derivative of *dekm (“ten”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has the word: the Cid gives a hundred marks to the abbot for Doña Jimena, „dóvos ciento marcos”, and his men tell of a hundred knights.^[12][13] The Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250), the first record in an original copy, has the shortened cient marauedis.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used ciento and cient freely before nouns;^[13] Berceo writes cient cientos sueldos for ten thousand shillings.^[13] Autoridades still treated cien and ciento as the same word, cien always placed before the noun and ciento usually after it.^[3] Cuervo's Apuntaciones discuss how the two forms are shared out.^[6]

Covarrubias records ciento por ciento for a return equal to the capital, ciento por uno for a great reward, and the card game los cientos, much played in Spain.^[14] The noun sense “a set of a hundred”, as in a hundred eggs, and the plural for an old tax of up to four per cent on goods sold are both in the current dictionary.^[8][15] The colloquial ciento y la madre means “a great many people”.^[8][4]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has ciento marcos.^[12][6][7]
• 1218–c. 1250 – the shortened cient in the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes.^[12]
• c. 1250 – the learned derivative centenario, in the Setenario.^[6]
• 1254 – a text in the Alfonsine corpus uses cientos as a noun for groups of a hundred.^[16]
• 1495 – the compound ciempiés, then ciento pies.^[7]
• 1512 – the first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico, in siete y medio por ciento.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the card game los cientos.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades distinguishes cien before the noun from ciento after it.^[3]

Meanings

Numeral

1. One hundred (100), used in compounds before lower numerals: ciento cuarenta.^[8][4][1]
2. hundredth, in a series: la página ciento doce.^[8]

Noun

1. A set of a hundred units: un ciento de tornillos.^[8][1]
2. (in the plural) Hundreds, an indefinite large number: cientos de kilómetros.^[4][1]
3. (rare) The figure or sign for the number one hundred.^[8]
4. (in the plural) An old card game for two, won by the first to make a hundred points.^[8]
5. (historical, in the plural) A tax of up to four per cent on goods sold.^[8]

Word family

• centavo
• centésimo
• céntimo
• porcentaje
• centenar
• centena
• ciempiés
• doscientos

Related words

• cien
• Latin centum
• Portuguese cento

Usage notes

Por ciento expresses a percentage (el diez por ciento), and ciento por ciento means the same as cien por cien “completely”.^[8][18] The proverb más vale pájaro en mano que ciento volando “a bird in the hand is worth a hundred flying” keeps ciento as a pronoun.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. ciento
3. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 346
4. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ciento
5. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1581
6. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 67
7. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ciento
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. ciento
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. centum
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. centum
11. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 170
12. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. ciento
13. ^ a b c 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. 690
14. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 596
15. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 379
16. ^ 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. ciento
17. ^ 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. ciento
18. ^ 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. 127