copia

Forms

copia f (plural copias)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin cōpia (“abundance, wealth; forces; the means or opportunity of having something”), a learned word.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin noun is formed from cōps (“well supplied, rich”), from co- and ops (“power, resources”).^[5][1][2] De Vaan traces the base noun to Proto-Indo-European *h₃e/op-(i-) (“ability, force”).^[6]

The sense “copy” is explained in several ways.^[2] It is often taken to come from the abundance that copies create.^[2] Bloch started from legal phrases meaning “to give leave to transcribe”.^[2] Corominas starts from the classical sense “the means of having something” (Cicero's phrase “to put something at someone's disposal”), a sense Nebrija still gives as “faculty”.^[2] He adds a church phrase meaning “to have a confessor available”: to have the copia of a book or document then came to mean to have an example of it.^[2][3][7] The DHLF instead makes the medieval Latin noun a back-formation from a verb copiare (“to reproduce a writing”).^[8] In this sense the word is found in medieval Latin in southern France in 1276, and French has it from the 14th century.^[2]

The same Latin word is Catalan còpia, French copie, Italian copia and Portuguese cópia.^{[9][8][2][10]} Medieval Spanish and Catalan more often said traslado and trasllat for a copy.^[2][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250, in a 15th-century copy) has the Latin sense of means or capacity: mas yo pora saberlos de seso non he copia “but I have not the wit to know them all”.^[11] The Aragonese Vidal Mayor of about 1250, the first record without a later copy, speaks of a document la copia del quoal instrument non puede auer, whose availability a party to a lawsuit cannot obtain.^[11][2] The BDELC dates the sense “abundance” to the second half of the 13th century.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Until the 15th century the word meant “abundance” in the texts and in Nebrija, as in grand copia de peones “a great number of foot soldiers” in Valera's chronicle of 1487–1488.^[2][12][13] The sense “transcript” is recorded from 1511, in the Nueva Recopilación.^[2][3] In 1611 Covarrubias still gave “abundance” first and said that the word sometimes means the transcript of an original.^[14] The Diccionario de Autoridades called it a purely Latin word and added a painting made in imitation of another.^[15]

The Academy's 1817 dictionary has the literal transcript of a writing or a piece of music, the written account of tithes given to each sharer, the list of nouns and verbs with their cases in grammars, a copy of a painting or sculpture, and the sense “portrait”.^[16] In the modern dictionary the copying and reproduction senses come first, with copies of photographs, films, tapes and computer programs.^[4][17] Puerto Rican Spanish uses it for a copy of a publication after English copy.^[18] In El Salvador copia is slang for a forger of banknotes.^[19]

Timeline

• 1240–1250 – non he copia in the Libro de Alexandre, known from a 15th-century copy.^[11]
• c. 1250 – copia in the Vidal Mayor.^[11][2]
• c. 1440 – used by Alfonso de la Torre, Mena and Santillana.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives the senses “abundance” and “means, faculty”.^[20][13]
• 1511 – first record of the sense “transcript”.^[2][3]
• 1526 – first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo: mucha copia de mucha gente.^[21]
• 1592 – first record of the verb copiar.^[2][3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the meaning “transcript” and the word copista.^[14][3]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology, from Latin copia.^[22]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of copying (copiar).^[4]
2. (formal) Abundance (abundancia), a great quantity: El informe aporta gran copia de datos.^[4][23]
3. A literal reproduction of a text or a score (partitura), a copy.^[4][1]
4. (grammar) In treatises on syntax, a list of nouns and verbs with the cases they govern.^[4]
5. A work of art that faithfully reproduces an original.^[4]
6. An exact reproduction of an object by mechanical means: Hizo una copia de la llave del garaje.^[4]
7. An imitation (imitación) of another's work passed off as original.^[4]
8. A person who looks very like another: La niña es una copia de su abuela.^[4][23]
9. Each of the copies or ejemplares made of a publication, photograph, film, tape or computer program.^[4]
10. (obsolete) A portrait (retrato) or likeness of someone.^[4]

Word family

• copiar
• copista
• acopiar
• copioso
• fotocopia
• acopio

Related words

• Latin cōpia
• Catalan còpia
• French copie

Usage notes

Fixed phrases include copia de seguridad “backup copy” and, in law, copia simple “uncertified copy”.^[4][1]

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 j k l m n o p q Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 188
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. copia
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. copia
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. cōpia
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. copia
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. copie
9. ^ a b Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 2, 906
10. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. cópia
11. ^ 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. copia
12. ^ 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. s.v. copia
13. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 318
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. 510
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 584
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 239
17. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. copia
18. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. copia
19. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. copia
20. ^ 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. copia
21. ^ 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. copia
22. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 290
23. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. copia