cualidad

Forms

cualidad f (plural cualidades)^[1] Old Spanish wrote qualidad or qualidat (Aragonese qualidat in the Vidal Mayor), and Autoridades still had the entry under qualidad.^[2][3][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish qualidad, borrowed from Latin quālitās (“quality, nature”), a learned word.^[4][5][1] The form calidad, recorded earlier, is the same borrowing.^[4] Wiktionary counts the two as doublets.^[1] The Latin word was coined by Cicero from quālis (“of what kind”) with -tās, to render the philosophers' Ancient Greek ποιότης (poiótēs).^[6][7][1] The Greek word comes from ποιός (poiós, “of what kind”).^[8][1]

The same Latin word was taken as Portuguese qualidade, Catalan qualitat, French qualité and Italian qualità.^[9][10][11] Nascentes calls the Portuguese word semi-learned, remade from an older calidade.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Among the earliest records, Alfonso X's Lapidario says of a stone that the dust of its polishing looks like blood en color & en todas sus qualidades “in colour and in all its qualities”.^[2][13] The Libro de Alexandre, of 1240–1250 but known from a 15th-century copy, already speaks of the qualidades of each element.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In medieval science the word named the properties of things and, in natural philosophy, the four basic principles of bodies (hot, cold, dry and wet): an Alfonsine astrological text of 1277 calls a planet estemprada en todas las qualidades.^[13] Legal texts used it for the nature or size of a debt, beside quantidat.^[2] Alonso de Palencia explained in 1490 that qualitas is so called because it shows what each thing is like, good or bad.^[14]

The Academy treated cualidad as a mere variant of calidad in 1817 and 1843, and gave it its own definition, the natural or acquired features that distinguish people or things, in 1869.^[15][16][17] Writers on synonyms then set the two apart: cualidad a single feature, calidad the sum of the features or the standing of a person or thing.^[18][19] Today it also means a good quality of a person.^[5][20]

Timeline

• 1240–1250 – qualidades of the elements in the Libro de Alexandre (15th-century copy).^[2]
• c. 1250 – qualidat of a debt in the Aragonese Vidal Mayor;^[2][13] qualidades in Alfonso X's Lapidario.^[2][13]
• 1277 – the four qualities of natural philosophy in Alfonso X's astrological works.^[13]
• 1490 – Alonso de Palencia's Latin vocabulary, the BDELC's date for the form cualidad.^[4][14]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija translates calidad o acidente with Latin qualitas.^[21]
• 1570 – first record from the Americas, in Nueva Galicia.^[22]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary treats it as the same word as calidad.^[15]
• 1869 – the Academy gives it a definition of its own.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy's first etymology: “Del lat. qualĭtas”.^[23]

Meanings

Noun

1. A feature or distinguishing characteristic of the nature of someone or something: La transparencia es una cualidad del vidrio.^[5][24]
2. A good quality, especially of a person: Es un chico con grandes cualidades.^[5][20]
3. Quality, condition or nature of something or someone; calidad.^[5][25]

Related words

• calidad
• cual
• cualitativo
• calificar
• Latin quālitās
• Portuguese qualidade
• French qualité

Usage notes

Moliner notes that la cualidad de followed by an adjective stands in for a noun of quality where Spanish has none.^[24] Until the 19th century the Academy treated cualidad and calidad as one word.^[15][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. cualidad
3. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 450
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cual
5. ^ a b c d e 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. cualidad
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. qualitas
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. qualitas
8. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. ποιότης
9. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 627
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2777
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. qualité
12. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. qualidade
13. ^ a b c d e 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. cualidad
14. ^ 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. 822
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 257
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 209
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 224
18. ^ Barcia, Roque (1880–1883), Primer diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico de Álvarez Hermanos, p. 1136
19. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. cualidad
20. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. cualidad
21. ^ 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. cualidad
22. ^ 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. cualidad
23. ^ 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
24. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cualidad
25. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. cualidad