cuál

Forms

cuál m or f (masculine and feminine plural cuáles)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish qual, inherited from Latin quālis (“of what kind; such as”).^[2][3][4][1] In Latin the word asked or stated the quality of something and answered tālis (“such”); in Romance it became a plain interrogative and relative pronoun, taking the place of quis (“who?”) and quī (“who, which”).^[2] Corominas notes that Spanish and Italian have kept the old sense “of what kind” better than the other Romance languages, and that the word is found in every period of Spanish and in very popular texts, so that its survival is not due to learned influence.^[2]

The same word is Portuguese qual, Italian quale, French quel and Romanian care.^[5][6] The Latin adjective is formed from the interrogative and relative stem with the suffix -ālis.^[7] Wiktionary traces it to *kʷālis, and Lewis and Short compare πηλίκος (pēlíkos).^[1][8]

The Old Aragonese conjunction cual (“since, because”) has a separate source: Corominas takes it from quārē (“why”), altered under the influence of the pronoun.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the first record to the Glosas Emilianenses, of the middle of the 10th century.^[2][3] The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has the exclamation ¡Cuál lidia bien...! “how well he fights!” and the indirect question qual dara meiores colpes “which one would strike the better blows”.^[9][10] The Auto de los Reyes Magos (c. 1180) has the direct interrogative sense: No sé quál es achesta strela “I do not know which star this is”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish the word served as interrogative, as relative with and without the article (el qual, la hora en qual murió) and as a correlative of tal (tales... quales).^[10] Nebrija (c. 1495) kept three uses apart: cual with the article for Latin qui, quae, quod, without it for qualis, and cual de dos for uter.^[11][10] Covarrubias (1611) records qual y qual in the sense “few, rare”, and Autoridades adds the disjunctive qual... qual “one... another” and an exclamative use.^[12][13]

In its 1884 dictionary the Academy noted that the disjunctive use (cuál más, cuál menos) takes a written accent, as the interrogative does.^[14] Popular speech has largely given up the relative cual, while the interrogative lives on.^[2] Dialects have made a feminine cuala, common in Asturias and Aragon and found in 16th-century Aragonese texts of the Moriscos, and a neuter cualo.^[2][1] Before a noun, as in ¿cuál libro?, the interrogative is more frequent in parts of Latin America.^[4][1]

Timeline

• c. 950 – first record, in the Glosas Emilianenses.^[2][3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses cuál in an exclamation and in an indirect question.^[9][10]
• c. 1180 – the Auto de los Reyes Magos asks quál es achesta strela.^[9]
• 1276–1279 – quales “which” before a noun in the prose of Alfonso X's court.^[15]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija distinguishes cual with and without the article and cual de dos.^[11]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records qual y qual, “a few, rare”.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin qualis and the accented spelling for the disjunctive use.^[14]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. which, which one, what: asks which person or thing of a known set is meant, in direct and indirect questions: ¿Cuál de las dos maletas es la tuya?^[4][1]
2. (in the pattern cuál... cuál...) One... another: Cuál reía, cuál lloraba.^[4][13]

Determiner

1. (chiefly Latin America) Which, what, before a noun: ¿Cuál camisa prefieres?^[4][1]

Adverb

1. (exclamative, rare) How, in what way.^[4]

Related words

• cual
• cualquiera
• calidad
• Latin quālis
• Portuguese qual

Usage notes

With the written accent, cuál is the interrogative and exclamative word; the relative cual (el cual, tal cual) is a separate headword in the DLE.^[4][16] The phrase a cuál más before an adjective stresses a quality shared by several people or things: dos novelas a cuál más triste.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 257
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cual
4. ^ 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. cuál
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2777
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ 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. cuál
10. ^ a b c d 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. 821
11. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 321
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. 1240
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 449
14. ^ 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. 311
15. ^ 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. cual
16. ^ 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. cual