costumbre

Forms

costumbre f (plural costumbres)^[1] Old Spanish texts write costumbre, costunbre, costumne and costume.^[2][3] In the Canary Islands and formerly in Aragon the word is also masculine: el costumbre.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish costumne, inherited from Latin cōnsuētūdō (“custom, habit”), from its accusative.^[5][3][1] The DLE starts from Vulgar Latin *cosuetumen, a form standing for the classical word, and García de Diego speaks of a change of suffix.^[6][7] Corominas holds that the change of ending was phonetic and common to all the Romance languages and to every Spanish word in ⟨-dumbre⟩ from Latin ⟨-tudo⟩, such as certidumbre, mansedumbre and muchedumbre.^[6][7][5] The Old Spanish form of 1127 points to an earlier *costudne.^[3][8]

The word survives in all the Romance languages except Romanian: Portuguese costume, Galician costume, Catalan costum, French coutume, Occitan costum, Italian costume and Sardinian costúmene.^[5][7][9] Spanish kept the Latin feminine, as do French, partly Occitan and Old Catalan costuma.^[5] Italian, Portuguese, Galician and Catalan made it masculine.^[5][9]

The Latin noun is formed from cōnsuēscō (“to accustom; to grow used to”) with the suffix -tūdō, and the verb from con- and suēscō (“to become accustomed”).^[1][5] De Vaan explains this verb as an inchoative from a Proto-Indo-European phrase meaning “to make one's own”, related to Ancient Greek ἦθος (êthos, “custom, usage”).^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The form costumne appears in a charter of 1127, and costumbre in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy).^[5][3] There Pero Mudo answers the Cid: Dirévos, Cid, costunbres avedes tales “I'll tell you, Cid: you have such habits”, and goes on to complain that he is always called by that name at court.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish it meant a habit formed by repeating the same acts, as in the Libro de Alexandre (c. 1240–1250): Non es nuestra costumbre tesoros condesar “it is not our custom to hoard treasure”.^[12] In Alfonso X's histories it is used both of personal habits and of the customs of a people.^[13] Autoridades in 1729 also gives the legal sense, an unwritten law or usage with the force of written law.^[14]

The sense “menstruation” is already in Nebrija and in Quevedo.^[5] Covarrubias in 1611 explains it by the regularity of the monthly period, and the DLE now marks it as obsolete.^[5][15][6] Covarrubias also believed the Spanish word came directly from Italian costume.^[15] The derivative costumbrista, for the writers who describe the manners of a region, was still missing from the Academy's 1899 edition.^[5][3] Portuguese took costumbrismo from Spanish in the 20th century.^[5][3][16] The Italian word, in the narrow sense of the dress of a period or class, gave French costume (1641) and through it English costume.^[17][1]

Timeline

• 1127 – a charter has the form costumne.^[5][3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has costunbres.^[11][5]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo uses the participle costumnado “accustomed”.^[3][5]
• c. 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre: Non es nuestra costumbre tesoros condesar.^[12]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España uses it of personal habits.^[13]
• 1330 – first record of the verb acostumbrar.^[3]
• 1494 – Aragonese incunabula printed in Zaragoza treat costumbre as masculine.^[5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin mos and consuetudo.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains the sense “menstruation”.^[15]
• 1729 – Autoridades defines it as a habit acquired by repetition, and as an unwritten law.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A habit, a usual way of acting or behaving: Tiene la costumbre de leer antes de dormir.^[6][1]
2. A custom or traditional practice of a community or a place, often in the plural: las costumbres de la comarca.^[6][1]
3. (obsolete) menstruation.^[6][15]

Word family

• costumbrista
• acostumbrar
• costumbrismo
• acostumbrado
• desacostumbrado

Related words

• consuetudinario
• Latin cōnsuētūdō
• Portuguese costume

Usage notes

The word is feminine in standard Spanish, but the Canarian historical dictionary records el costumbre from 1705 to the 20th century, and Corominas notes the masculine in Aragon and in Aragonese printed books.^[4][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. costumbre
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. costumbre
4. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. costumbre
5. ^ 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, 224
6. ^ 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. costumbre
7. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. costumbre
8. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. costumbre
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, 1004
10. ^ 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. suesco
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. costumbre
12. ^ 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, p. 805
13. ^ a b 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. costumbre
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 643
15. ^ a b c d Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 527
16. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1013
17. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. costume
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 320