civil

Forms

civil m or f (masculine and feminine plural civiles, superlative civilísimo)^[1] Old Spanish texts also spell it çiuil, çeuil and cevil.^[2][3] Documents from the Americas of the 16th century write çevil, as in cabsas çeviles e creminales (Nicaragua, 1527).^[4]

Etymology

It is a learned borrowing, borrowed from Latin cīvīlis (“of citizens; political”), first recorded in a charter of 1169.^[5][6][7][1] The Latin adjective is formed from cīvis (“citizen”) with the suffix -īlis.^[1][6] Corominas treats it with the other learned words of this family at the end of his article on ciudad, the popular descendant of cīvitās.^[5]

De Vaan traces the Latin noun to Proto-Italic *keiwi- (“society”) and Proto-Indo-European *ḱei-uo- (“friendly, intimate, dear”), with cognates such as Sanskrit शिव (śivá, “favourable”) and Old English hīwan (“members of the household”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DCECH dates the first record to a charter of 1169 in Oelschläger's list.^[5][6] The earliest text in the CDH is the record of the Cortes of León of 1208, which speaks of el derecho civil y canonical “civil and canon law”.^[2] In the 13th century the word belongs to legal language: the Fueros de Aragón (1247) have por dreito çiuil, and the Vidal Mayor (c. 1250) opposes a pleito criminal o ciuil.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Alonso de Palencia, about 1490, already set civil against militar in administrative terms, but the Autoridades still said that the Latin sense “sociable, urbane” was not in use in Spanish; it recognised the legal sense, opposed to criminal.^[5][9] Old Spanish instead used the word for “low, base, mean”, a sense with many examples from the Gran conquista de Ultramar to the 17th century.^[5] Corominas explains it from medieval Latin miles “knight”: as the opposite of militaris, civilis came to mean “not noble, villainous”; the muerte civil “civil death” of the Partidas, a dishonouring penalty, would also have helped.^[5] Juan de Valdés noted that Spaniards used the word in the opposite sense to Latin, as in a proverb where cevil stands for “vile and low”, and Covarrubias took cevil for a compound of ce- and vil.^[5]

The Academy still listed “coarse, mean, vile” as an old sense in 1869, beside the legal sense and the use for any cause that is neither ecclesiastical nor military.^[10] The modern opposition to the military and the clergy (población civil, matrimonio civil) became central, and un civil now also means a member of the Guardia Civil, a sense the 1917 Alemany dictionary already has.^[7][11] In Chile el civil was the registrar of births, deaths and marriages, and also his office.^[12] In Tabasco the word names a shrub of the mallow family whose fibre was used for ropes.^[13]

Timeline

• 1169 – first record, in a charter.^[5][6]
• 1208 – derecho civil in the Cortes of León.^[2]
• 1247 – dreito çiuil in the Fueros de Aragón.^[2]
• c. 1490 – Alonso de Palencia opposes civil to militar.^[5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses it as a thing of the city, and polished, and gives derecho civil as ius civile.^[14]
• 1527 – first record from the Americas, in Nicaragua.^[4]
• 1726–1739 – the Autoridades gives the senses “of the city and its citizens”, the legal sense and “base, mean”.^[9]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology Del lat. civilis.^[15]
• 1917 – Alemany records civil as a colloquial noun for a civil guard.^[11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of the city or of its citizens; civic.^[7][16]
2. Sociable, courteous, polite.^[7][16]
3. Not military and not ecclesiastical or religious: Se casaron por lo civil.^[7][16]
4. Of works such as roads, bridges and ports built for public service; of engineers who build them: ingeniero civil.^[7]
5. (law) Concerning private relations and interests: the status of persons, family, inheritance, property, contracts and liability.^[7]
6. (obsolete) Base, mean, vile.^[7][10]

Noun

1. A civilian, a person who is not in the armed forces.^[7][17]
2. (colloquial, Spain) A member of the Guardia Civil.^[7][16]

Word family

• civilidad
• civilista
• civilizar
• incivil

Related words

• ciudad
• ciudadano
• civismo
• Latin civis

Usage notes

Set phrases include guerra civil, casarse por lo civil “to marry in a civil ceremony” and de civil “in plain clothes”.^[7][9]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. civil
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. civil
4. ^ 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, p. s.v. cevil
5. ^ 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, 94
6. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. civil
7. ^ 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. civil
8. ^ 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. cīvis
9. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 364
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 177
11. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 391
12. ^ Román, Manuel Antonio (1901–1918), Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, 5 vols., Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de San José, p. 321
13. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 247
14. ^ 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, p. s.v. civil
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 229
16. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. civil
17. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. civil