débil

Forms

débil m or f (masculine and feminine plural débiles)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin dēbilis (“weak, feeble; crippled”), a learned word.^[2][3][4][5] Wiktionary is more cautious and calls it possibly a learned borrowing.^[1] The popular outcome of the same Latin word was Old Spanish deble (“weak”), and endeble belongs to the same family.^[5][1] Segura Munguía derives the latter from Vulgar Latin *indēbilis, perhaps through Old French endeble.^[6]

The Latin word also gave Italian debole and the learned French débile, which French borrowed in about 1265.^[7][8]

The Latin adjective is a compound of dē-: de Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *dē-be/oli- (“without strength”) and connects the second part with Proto-Indo-European *bel- (“strength”), the root of Sanskrit बल (bála, “strength”) and Ancient Greek βελτίων (beltíōn, “better”).^[9][1] Wiktionary calls the etymology disputed, and reports an older proposal that the adjective was formed from dēbeō (“to owe”) on the model of habilis (“manageable”).^[1] Lewis & Short analysed it as the prefix with that adjective, literally “unmanageable”, and Monlau and Echegaray repeated the explanation.^[10][11][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to Santillana and to Enrique de Villena, who uses the adverb débilmente, about 1433.^[2][3] The CDH has earlier Castilian and Aragonese hits: in Juan Fernández de Heredia's Gran crónica de España (1385) men's menbros son debiles & enflaqueçidos por las nieues “limbs are weak and enfeebled by the snows”, and a treatise on grafting trees of 1385–1407 describes the yellowish kind as mucho debil & flaco “very weak and feeble”.^[13] The sense is bodily weakness, as in Latin.^[13][9] In the Glosas Silenses the Latin inbalidis is glossed debiles, aflitos, but Corominas notes that it is uncertain whether this is a record of the Romance word.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages, and later in popular speech, the usual word for “weak” was flaco, and débil spread slowly: it is missing from Nebrija's Spanish–Latin vocabulary and other old dictionaries, though Nebrija glossed Latin debilis as cosa feble & flaca “a feeble, thin thing”.^[2][14] Covarrubias and Oudin (1607) have it, and the earliest example in the Diccionario de Autoridades is from Lope de Vega's Dorotea (1632).^[2][15] Cervantes speaks of the debiles arrimos de su flaca naturaleza “the feeble props of her weak nature”.^[16]

Autoridades defined it as anything thin, worn out and of little strength, and recorded an astrological use for a planet that stands in a sign with no aspect to the other planets.^[15] By 1843 the Academy also used it for a person who gives way through faintness of heart.^[17] Baralt (1855) warned against using it everywhere for French faible, preferring triste consuelo to débil consuelo.^[18] Modern dictionaries add phonetic and chemical senses, a weak acid or base being one with a low degree of ionisation.^[4][19] Débil mental names a person with a mental disability and is also an insult.^[20] In Dominican Spanish débil con means having a soft spot for someone or something.^[21] French débile, by contrast, now refers almost only to mental deficiency.^[22]

Timeline

• 1385 – Juan Fernández de Heredia's Gran crónica de España uses the plural debiles of limbs weakened by snow and frost.^[13]
• 1433 – the date Corominas gives for the first record, in Santillana and Villena.^[3][2]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary explains Latin debilis with feble and flaca.^[14]
• 1562 – the first record from the Americas, in Yucatán.^[23]
• 1570 – Cristóbal de las Casas's dictionary has the word;^[17] debilidad is dated to the same year.^[2][3]
• 1632 – Lope de Vega's Dorotea, the earliest example in the Diccionario de Autoridades.^[15][2]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary adds the figurative sense “faint-hearted, yielding”.^[17]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin debilis.^[24]

Meanings

Adjective

1. weak, feeble: having little strength, vigour or resistance; also used as a noun for a weak person: Después de la operación seguía muy débil.^[4][20][1]
2. Weak-willed: giving in easily to pressure or to affection: Es demasiado débil con su nieto.^[4][20]
3. Faint, slight or deficient, in a physical or moral sense: una luz débil.^[4][25]
4. (phonetics) Of a syllable: unstressed; of the vowels /i/ and /u/: closed.^[4][20]
5. (chemistry) Of an acid or base: having a very low degree of ionization.^[4][19]
6. (Dominican Republic) débil con: having a soft spot for someone or something.^[21]

Word family

• debilidad
• debilitar

Related words

• endeble
• flaco
• Latin dēbilis

Usage notes

Set phrases include punto débil “weak point” and, in physics, interacción débil “weak interaction”.^[4] Débil mental is a psychological term and a common insult.^[20]

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 h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 430
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. débil
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. débil
5. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2124
6. ^ 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. 310
7. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 191
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Monlau, Pedro Felipe (1856), Diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana (ensayo), Madrid: Imprenta de la Sociedad Literaria y Tipográfica, p. 244
12. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 621
13. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. débil
14. ^ a b 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. débil
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. débil
16. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. s.v. débil
17. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 226
18. ^ Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 217
19. ^ a b Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. débil
20. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. débil
21. ^ a b Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. débil
22. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. débil
23. ^ 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. débil
24. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 313
25. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. débil