desdeñar

Forms

desdeñar (first-person singular present desdeño, first-person singular preterite desdeñé, past participle desdeñado)^[1] Old Spanish wrote it desdennar as well as desdeñar.^[2][3] García de Diego also records an old Castilian and Galician esdeñar.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin dēdignor (“to reject as unworthy, to scorn”).^[5][6][4][7] Wiktionary, the Italian DELI, the Catalan DCVB and Nascentes start instead from Vulgar Latin *disdignare, a reshaping with the prefix dis-.^{[1][8][9][10]}

Meyer-Lübke thought the Spanish verb probably a loan from French, and its noun desdén a loan from French dédain.^[11] García de Diego rejects both views.^[4] Corominas makes the noun a Spanish derivative of the verb, first recorded about 1280, later than the verb itself.^[5]

The same verb is Portuguese desdenhar, Catalan desdenyar, Old Occitan desdenhar, Italian disdegnare and French dédaigner, the French word from Old French desdeignier.^{[11][12][8][1]}

The Latin verb is dē- with dignor (“to deem worthy”), from dignus (“worthy”).^[13][5][1] Wiktionary traces the adjective to *dekno- and the root Proto-Indo-European *deḱ- (“to take”),^[1] and Nocentini relates it to decet (“it is fitting”).^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to 1220–1250, the period of Berceo.^[5] The earliest CDH hit is in Berceo's Vida de San Millán (c. 1230, known from an 18th-century copy): the saint fears to sin si la obedïencia quisiesse desdeñar “if he chose to scorn obedience”.^[3] The first hit in a contemporary manuscript is in Alfonso X's Espéculo (before 1260), where a summoned party pays a fine por que desdenno de venjr “because he scorned to come”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

From the start the verb meant both “to treat with scorn” and, with an infinitive, “not to deign to do something”: Alfonso X's prose has both senses.^[15] Nebrija gives the transitive desdeñar a otro “to despise” beside desdeñarse, for Latin dedignor.^[16] Autoridades in 1732 defines it first in the language of love, to reject a person's devotion, quoting Don Quixote: desdeñar à quien las quiere, y amar à quien las aborrece “to scorn whoever loves them and love whoever loathes them”.^[17] It also gives “to despise”, and an old sense “to vex, exasperate” that Salvá and Gaspar y Roig mark as obsolete.^[17][18][19] Autoridades took the verb to be formed from the noun desdén, the reverse of the order of first records.^[17][5]

Moliner and VOX add the sense “to set aside as unimportant”, and the pronominal desdeñarse de “to think it beneath oneself” is now little used, according to the DLE.^[20][21][6]

Timeline

• c. 1230 – Berceo's Vida de San Millán (in an 18th-century copy), the first CDH hit.^[3]
• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre (in an early 15th-century copy).^[3]
• before 1260 – Alfonso X's Espéculo, the first hit in a contemporary manuscript.^[3]
• c. 1260 – the derivative desdeñoso is first recorded.^[5]
• c. 1280 – the noun desdén is first recorded.^[5]
• 1280 – the General estoria uses it with an infinitive, “not to deign to”.^[15]
• 1575 – the first record from the Americas, in Chile.^[22]
• 1732 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records it, with a quotation from Don Quixote.^[17]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary gives Latin dedignari as the etymon.^[23]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To disdain, scorn: to treat someone or something with desdén.^[6][20][1]
2. (transitive) To dismiss or refuse something as unimportant or unworthy: Desdeñó el consejo de su médico.^[20][21]
3. (pronominal, rare) desdeñarse de: to think it beneath oneself to do or say something: No se desdeñaba de barrer la tienda.^[6][20]

Word family

• desdén
• desdeñoso
• desdeñable

Related words

• digno
• dignarse
• indigno
• Portuguese desdenhar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. desdeñar
3. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. desdeñar
4. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2141
5. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. desdeñar
6. ^ a b c d 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. desdeñar
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. desdeñar
8. ^ a b Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
9. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. desdenyar
10. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. desdenhar
11. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
12. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. desdenhar
13. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
15. ^ 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. desdeñar
16. ^ 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. desdeñar
17. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 148
18. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 373
19. ^ Gaspar y Roig (eds.) (1853–1855), Biblioteca ilustrada de Gaspar y Roig: Diccionario enciclopédico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Imprenta y Librería de Gaspar y Roig, p. 1, 761
20. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. desdeñar
21. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. desdeñar
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. desdeñar
23. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 335