ciudad

Forms

ciudad f (plural ciudades)^[1] Old Spanish cibdad, cibdat, çibdat, cipdat, and cidat in the Libro de Alexandre.^[2][3] Ciudad became the usual form with Nebrija.^[2][3] Dialect forms include cidad in Palencia and Santander and cildad in León; popular suidá is widespread in the Americas.^[4][2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cibdad, inherited from Latin cīvitās (“the body of citizens; citizenship”), a derivative of cīvis (“citizen”) with -tās.^{[2][5][6][1][7]} The sense “city” appears only rarely in Latin, in Tacitus and a few other authors of the Silver Age, but in all the Romance languages the word replaced urbs.^[2] Terreros noted that the old spelling changed as its ⟨b⟩ became ⟨u⟩.^[8]

The same Latin word is Portuguese cidade, Galician cidade, Asturian ciudá, Catalan ciutat, Occitan ciutat, French cité, Italian città and Romanian cetate (“fortress”).^[9][4][1] Corominas sees a shortened Mozarabic form in place names such as Belchite and Chite, comparable to Old French cit and Old Occitan ciu.^[2] García de Diego derives El Chite instead from Latin ilicetum (“holm-oak wood”).^[2][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) names San Esteban „una buena cipdad” “a good city”.^[10][5] The first record in an original manuscript is in the Cortes de León of 1208, which speak of „la muchedumbre de las cibdades” and of envoys from each cibdat.^[10] In Alfonso X's prose the word means a town larger and more important than a village, and also a capital: the Lapidario recalls the year when King Ferdinand won „la cibdat de Seuilla”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias in 1611 defined the city as a community of citizens living under the same laws and government; the word could also mean the buildings, the town council or the city's representative in the Cortes.^[12] The Diccionario de Autoridades stressed the privileges granted by the kings: some cities were heads of kingdoms, others had a vote in the Cortes.^[13] From 1843 the Academy described a city as a town, commonly large, with more privileges than a villa; from 1884 it said that this was so in former times.^[14][15]

The DLE now also gives the urban world as opposed to the countryside and an area of the city with a single purpose (ciudad universitaria, ciudad deportiva).^[6] In Mexico a ciudad perdida is a slum of poor migrants.^[16] The derivative ciudadano is found from Berceo on, and ciudadela is an adaptation of Italian cittadella.^[2][5]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has the spelling cipdad.^[10]
• c. 1194–1211 – the Liber Regum has the spelling cibdath.^[10]
• 1208 – the Cortes de León write cibdades and cibdat.^[10]
• 1220–1250 – first record of ciudadano.^[5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija uses the form ciudad; his 1513 Vocabulario glosses it as Latin urbs and oppidum.^[2][17]
• 1525 – the first records from the Americas, at Nombre de Dios and Mexico City, still write cibdad and çibdad.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives the word from Latin civitas.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. civitas”.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A city: a set of buildings and streets, governed by a town council, whose dense population mostly works outside agriculture.^[6][1]
2. The urban world, as opposed to the countryside: Muchos jóvenes se marchan a la ciudad.^[6][19]
3. The council of a city.^[6]
4. A group of buildings and facilities with a specific purpose, as in ciudad universitaria “university campus”.^[6]
5. (historical) The title of towns that enjoyed greater privileges than a villa.^[6]
6. (historical) The deputies who represented a city in the Cortes.^[6]

Word family

• ciudadano
• ciudadanía
• conciudadano

Related words

• ciudadela
• civil
• cívico
• civismo
• Latin cīvitās
• Portuguese cidade
• Catalan ciutat

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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. 2, 93
3. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. ciudad
4. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1667
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ciudad
6. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. ciudad
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ 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, 439
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. civitas
10. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. ciudad
11. ^ 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. ciudad
12. ^ 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. 613
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 363
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 165
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. 246
16. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. ciudad
17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 326
18. ^ 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. cibdad
19. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ciudad