descender

Forms

descender (first-person singular present desciendo, first-person singular preterite descendí, past participle descendido)^[1] Old Spanish wrote decender and descender, probably pronounced alike;^[1] Nebrija and 16th-century authors use decendir.^[2] Old Leonese had fully inherited forms, deisenda (996, Sahagún) and dexendat (1030, Liébana; 1082, Toro).^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish decender, borrowed from Latin dēscendō (“to come down, descend”).^[2][3][4][1] Corominas notes that nothing in the sound change from the Latin to the Old Spanish form betrays a learned word, but that it was not wholly popular either: medieval forms without the diphthong (decenda, 1268; decende in the Partidas), the wavering infinitive ending and the commoner synonyms, among them baxar, point that way.^[2]

The popular Old Spanish word for “to go down” was decir, with a voiceless ç, kept apart from dezir “to say”, and in Galician-Portuguese decer, the source of Portuguese descer.^[2] Corominas rejects dēcēdō, dēcidō (“to fall down”) and dēiciō (“to throw down”) as its source, and derives it from that Latin verb, through a Vulgar Latin perfect stem *descidisse.^[2] Nascentes, on the other hand, derives the Portuguese verb from the Latin verb for “to fall down”.^[5] Fully inherited forms are Old Occitan deissendre and Italian scendere; French descendre is borrowed from Latin, and Old Catalan deixendre is the Old Catalan word.^[2][6][7]

This verb is formed from Latin dē- + scandō (“to climb”).^[8][1] De Vaan derives scandō from Proto-Indo-European *skend- (“to jump up, ascend”), comparing Old Irish sceinnid (“jumps”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas gives Berceo, in the 1230s and 1240s, as the first record, in the spelling decender.^[2][3] The CDH's first hit is in the Cantar de mio Cid, decendieron de los cavallos “they got down from their horses”, but Corominas and the Tentative Dictionary consider that isolated example foreign to the original, which uses only decir.^[10][2][11] In Berceo's Vida de San Millán the saint descendió de los montes “came down from the mountains”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose already has the main senses: to go down from a high place, of a liquid to flow down, to descend from an ancestor, and of a thing to derive from another.^[12] Autoridades in 1726 preferred the spelling descender to decender, as closer to the Latin, and noted the transitive use, as when Christ is said to be taken down from the Cross.^[13] Domínguez in 1846 objected that nobody said desciéndeme eso for bájame eso, and Cuervo in 1886 judged the verb to belong to literary language.^[14][15]

Alemany in 1917 adds a nautical sense, to sail from north to south towards the equator.^[16] The current dictionaries add a decline in quality or quantity, as of temperature or prices, and Moliner and VOX record the drop of a team or person to a lower rank.^[4][17][18]

Timeline

• 996 – the inherited Old Leonese form deisenda in a charter of Sahagún.^[2]
• c. 1140 – an isolated decendieron in the Cantar de mio Cid, known from a 14th-century copy and probably not in the original.^[10][2]
• 1211 – the Old Spanish Textual Archive's earliest text with the word, the Fazienda de Ultramar.^[19]
• c. 1230–1250 – Berceo uses decender.^[2][3]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses descender for going down and for the flow of humours.^[12]
• 1495 – Nebrija gives decendir for Latin descendo; first record of descendimiento.^[20][3]
• 1570 – first records of descendiente and descendencia.^[3]
• 1726 – Autoridades prefers the spelling descender.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To go down a slope or stair; to take or bring something down: Descendieron la imagen del altar.^[4][17]
2. (intransitive) To descend, go down from a higher to a lower place.^[4][1]
3. (intransitive) Of a liquid: to fall, flow.^[4]
4. (intransitive) To descend from an ancestor or lineage: Su familia desciende de pescadores gallegos.^[4][17]
5. (intransitive) To decrease in quality or quantity.^[4]
6. (intransitive) Of a thing: to derive or proceed from another.^[4]

Word family

• descendencia
• descendiente
• descendimiento
• descendente

Related words

• ascender
• condescender
• trascender
• descenso
• escandir
• Latin scandō
• Portuguese descer

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 456
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. descender
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. descender
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. descer
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 2210
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ 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. descender
11. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 176
12. ^ 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. descender
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 128
14. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 570
15. ^ 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, 998
16. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 554
17. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. descender
18. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. descender
19. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. descender
20. ^ 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. descender