cincuenta

Forms

cincuenta (invariable)^[1] Old Spanish wrote cinquaenta, çinquaenta, cinquenta, çinquenta and cinquanta.^[2][3] Old Spanish also had cincuaenta, and Aragonese has cincuanta.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cinquaenta, inherited from Vulgar Latin cīnquāgintā, the Vulgar Latin form of Latin quīnquāgintā (“fifty”).^{[3][5][1][6][7]} Gómez de Silva explains the initial ⟨c⟩ by dissimilation and by analogy with cinque (“five”), the Vulgar Latin form that gave cinco.^[8][3]

The same word is Portuguese cinquenta, Galician cincuenta, Asturian cincuenta, Catalan cinquanta, Occitan cinquanta, French cinquante, Italian cinquanta and Sardinian chimbanta.^[9][1] Old Portuguese had cincoenta and cinquaenta in the 13th century.^[10]

The Latin numeral is formed from quīnque (“five”) and -gintā (“ten times”).^[11][8] Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Indo-European *penkʷēḱomt, from earlier *pénkʷedḱomt (“five-ten”); its cognates include Ancient Greek πεντήκοντα (pentḗkonta) and Sanskrit पञ्चाशत् (pañcāśát).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) has the word, when the Cid gives a monastery fifty marks before he leaves Castile: dóvos cincuaenta marcos “I give you fifty marks”.^[12][3] The first text in a manuscript of its own time is the Semejanza del mundo (c. 1223), on the gates of Babylon, which are çinquenta braças “fifty fathoms” wide.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The numeral itself has not changed in meaning; the history is that of its spelling, from cinquaenta in the Cid and cinquenta in Berceo to the modern cincuenta.^[3][2] Nebrija already gives it as a number, numerus quinquagenarius.^[13][14] Autoridades treats it as a noun, the number that is half of a hundred, and the Academy in 1869 as an adjective.^[15][16] Alemany in 1917 adds the ordinal use (“fiftieth”) and the noun for the figure, as the DLE has them today.^[17][6]

In Colombia and Ecuador cincuenta cincuenta means “fifty-fifty, half and half”.^[18] The word passed into Tagalog as singkwenta and into Cebuano.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has cinquaenta (in a 14th-century copy).^[3][5][12]
• c. 1215 – the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca has cincuenta (in a 14th-century copy).^[12]
• c. 1223 – the Semejanza del mundo has çinquenta, the first record in a manuscript of its time.^[12]
• 1236–1246 – Berceo writes cinquenta.^[3][12]
• 1254 – Alfonso X's Judizios de las estrellas has cinquaenta grados “fifty degrees”.^[19]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives the number with its Latin equivalent.^[13][14]
• 1579 – the first record in the Americas, in Cuba, spelt sinquenta.^[20]
• 1605 – the learned ordinal quincuagésimo.^[5]
• 1869 – the Academy defines it as an adjective.^[16]

Meanings

Numeral

1. fifty: five times ten: Compró cincuenta sillas para la boda.^[6][1]
2. fiftieth: fiftieth in a series: Vive en el piso cincuenta.^[6][21]

Noun

1. The number fifty, and the figure or figures that represent it.^[6]

Word family

• cincuentena
• cincuentavo
• cincuentenario
• cincuentón

Related words

• cinco
• quincuagésimo
• cincuesma
• Latin quīnquāgintā

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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. cincuenta
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 84
4. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 5362
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cinco
6. ^ 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. cincuenta
7. ^ 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. 654
8. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 171
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
13. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 325
14. ^ a b 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
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 354
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 175
17. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 383
18. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. cincuenta
19. ^ 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. cincuenta
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. cincuenta
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos