delante

Forms

delante^[1] Old Spanish has denante (10th–11th centuries), delant and delante, and the Leonese variant delantre.^[2][3] Delantre is found above all in Leonese texts such as the Fuero Juzgo and a council of León of 1020, and it still lives in the speech of that region.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish delante, earlier denante, which is formed from Old Spanish de (“of, from”) + enante (“in front”).^[2][4][5][1] The second part continues Late Latin inante (“in front, opposite”), itself from ante (“before, in front”) with the preposition in.^[2][6][7] The Late Latin compound appears in Jerome, the Itinerarium Antonini and Egeria, and in Medieval Latin it meant “forward”, “at the front” and “beforehand”.^[1][8]

The /l/ arose by dissimilation of the first of the two /n/ of the older form.^[2] The older form is documented in glossaries and charters of the 10th and 11th centuries, all from Aragon and eastern Castile, but Corominas thinks it must have existed earlier everywhere Castilian was spoken.^[2] The variant delantre owes its /r/ to the echo of the liquid, helped by the adverbs in -mientre.^[2]

The same Latin adverb is continued by Old Catalan denant, Old Occitan denan, Italian dinanzi, Portuguese diante and Romanian înainte.^[2][9] The Portuguese and Galician word may come straight from the form with /n/, without the dissimilation, through older deante.^[2][10]

The Latin preposition goes back to Proto-Italic *anti (“before, in front of”) and to Proto-Indo-European *h₂ent-i, the locative singular of a root noun *h₂ent- (“front”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The older form denante is first found in the Glosas Emilianenses, around 950.^[2][4] The DCECH dates the forms with /l/ to 1100 and 1124, and the BDELC heads its article “1124”.^[2][4] The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) already has the apocopated delant: the Moors hiding in ambush leave the men delant “in front” and turn back towards the castle.^[12]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish delante was also a preposition, used without de (delante mí, delante la casa), as ante was in Latin: so in Berceo, in the archaic Aragonese texts and in prose down to the 16th century (Guevara, Juan de Valdés, Fray Luis de León).^[2][13] From the early 17th century this use was tolerated only in verse.^[2] Until the same period the etymological sense “from the presence of” survived in phrases such as quitar delante and huir delante without de, still found in Cervantes and Rojas Zorrilla.^[2][13] Cuervo wrote in 1886–1893 that both the prepositional use and the sense of separation had been forgotten, so that the word lived on only as an adverb of position.^[13]

The Diccionario de Autoridades (1732) defined delante as an adverb of place, of time (“what has gone before”) and of presence, as in cubrirse delante del rey, and explained it as de + ante with an /l/ inserted.^[14] The 1884 Academy dictionary added the sense “opposite, facing” and marked the use for de delante as obsolete.^[15] Today the word is an adverb of place, and with de a prepositional phrase meaning “in front of” and “in the presence of”.^[5][1] In Ecuador the noun el delante means “presence”.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 950 – the Glosas Emilianenses record the older form denante.^[2][4]
• 1124 – the form delante is first recorded.^[2][4]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses delant.^[2][12]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses delant and delante for “in front”, “opposite” and “in the presence of”.^[17]
• 1515 – first record in the Americas, from Tierra Firme, still in the old construction without de.^[18]
• c. 1600 – the prepositional use without de is now confined to verse.^[2]
• 1611 – Covarrubias compares the word to Latin coram and records Dios delante.^[19]
• 1732 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the older form delantre.^[14]

Meanings

Adverb

1. in front, ahead: in the forward part, or in a place with someone or something behind it: Los niños se sentaron delante.^[5][1]
2. opposite, facing (enfrente).^[5]
3. With hacia: forward; with por: ahead, still to come: Tenemos todo el día por delante.^[1][20]
4. (colloquial) In someone's presence, not behind their back.^[20]
5. delante de: in front of; in the presence of: No lo digas delante de los niños.^[5]
6. (obsolete) For de delante or delante de.^[5]

Word family

• delantero
• delantal
• adelante
• adelantar
• delantera

Related words

• antes
• ante
• Portuguese diante
• Italian dinanzi

Usage notes

The preposition use without de (delante mí, delante la puerta) is archaic and was admitted only in verse after about 1600.^[2] Wiktionary also records it as a preposition followed by a possessive pronoun.^[1]

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 i j k l m n o p q r s Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 437
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. delante
4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. delante
5. ^ 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. delante
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 218
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. delante
8. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. inante
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4337
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1175
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ 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. delante
13. ^ a b c Cuervo, Rufino José (1886–1893), Diccionario de construcción y régimen de la lengua castellana, vols. I–II (A–D), París: A. Roger y F. Chernoviz, p. 2, 867
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 56
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 344
16. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. delante
17. ^ 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. delante
18. ^ 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. delante
19. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1, 641
20. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. delante