completo

Forms

completo (feminine completa, masculine plural completos, feminine plural completas, superlative completísimo)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin complētus (“filled up, complete”), the past participle of compleō (“to fill up, complete”), a learned word that Corominas dates to about 1720.^[2][3][4][1] The Diccionario de Autoridades says it was taken from Latin and quotes a recent author for it.^[5][3]

The Latin verb is formed from con- and pleō (“to fill”).^[1][6] Gómez de Silva traces the simple verb to Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“full”).^[6] The same Latin verb gave Spanish, by a semi-learned route, cumplir, whose participle cumplido is its doublet.^[3][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas found no record before the Diccionario de Autoridades, whose volume of 1729 notes that the literal sense “full” is hardly used and that the word usually means “exact, perfect, with nothing lacking”, as in a banquet or a celebration that was completo.^[3][2][5] Older are the noun completas “compline”, recorded in 1505, and two forms in a text of 1515 in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[2][7]

Semantic evolution

The Academy's dictionary defined the word as “exact, perfect” from 1817 to 1884, and Domínguez (1846) added “whole, with nothing lacking”.^[8][9][10] The DLE now puts the sense “full” first.^[4] In 18th-century American documents it is used of a complete set and, in Lima in 1775, of a person of all-round worth.^[11]

In Chile completo is a hot dog topped with tomato, sauerkraut and mayonnaise, and in Argentina a breakfast of white coffee with toast, butter and jam.^[12][1]

Timeline

• c. 1720 – the first record of the adjective, according to Corominas.^[2][13]
• 1729 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records it as “exact, perfect”.^[5]
• 1761 – first record from the Americas, in Bogotá, of a complete set of buckles.^[11]
• 1846 – Domínguez defines it as “whole, with nothing lacking”.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from complētus.^[9]

Meanings

Adjective

1. full; complete, with all its parts: El autobús ya iba completo.^[4][1][14]
2. Finished, perfect.^[4][1]
3. Total, utter, of a quality or event present in every respect: Fue un completo error.^[15]
4. (Cuba, Paraguay) Of a person: of great human worth.^[12]

Noun

1. (Chile) A hot dog served with chopped tomato, sauerkraut and mayonnaise.^[12][1]
2. (Argentina) A breakfast or afternoon snack of white coffee with toast, butter and jam.^[12]
3. (in the feminine plural, completas) compline, the last of the canonical hours.^[4]

Word family

• completamente
• completitud

Related words

• complemento
• cumplir
• repleto
• cumplido
• Latin complētus

Usage notes

Por completo means “completely”.^[4] Al completo means “with nothing missing, with every place taken”.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cumplir
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 290
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. completo
5. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 452
6. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. completo
7. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. completo
8. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 219
9. ^ 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. 266
10. ^ a b Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 424
11. ^ 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. completo
12. ^ a b c d Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. completo
13. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 141
14. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. completo
15. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. completo
16. ^ 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. 583