desmayo

Forms

desmayo m (plural desmayos)^[1]

Etymology

It is a deverbal noun from Spanish desmayar.^[2][1][3] The verb was taken in the early 13th century from Old French esmaiier (“to disturb, frighten; to lose heart”), which comes from Vulgar Latin *exmagare (“to deprive of strength”), formed on the Germanic verb Proto-Germanic *magan (“to have strength, be able”).^[3][4] The Vulgar Latin verb left native descendants in several Romance languages, such as Old Occitan esmagar and Italian smagare (“to confuse, perturb”), and probably Portuguese esmagar (“to crush”).^[3] Corominas thinks it once covered the whole Peninsula until the French loan replaced it.^[3] The same French verb was borrowed as Catalan desmaiar and Portuguese desmaiar, and it is the source of English dismay.^[3]

Covarrubias in 1611 explained the noun from the month of May, as flowers and plants wither when May ends and the heat of June begins; the Diccionario de Autoridades repeated his explanation.^[5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest hit for the noun is in Berceo's Vida de San Millán de la Cogolla (c. 1230, in an 18th-century copy): Oídme, compañeros, si avedes desmayo “hear me, companions, if you are losing heart”.^[7][8] The DCECH and the BDELC give a later first record, Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor of about 1330–1335.^[3][4] The medieval sense was “discouragement, loss of heart”, the sense of the verb, which in the Middle Ages always meant “to lose courage, grow faint”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The sense “fainting, loss of consciousness” grew out of the reflexive desmayarse, which Corominas finds only from the Golden Age on (Fray Luis de León, Mariana, Cervantes).^[3] By 1726 the Diccionario de Autoridades defined the noun as a failing of the spirit and of the strength, with Saint Teresa's un desmayo, que ni dexa hablar ni menear “a faint that lets one neither speak nor move”.^[6] In 1817 the Academy added “loss of the senses”.^[9] The tree name followed: the weeping willow is desmayo in the Academy's dictionary from 1884, and Asturian desmayu and Catalan desmai have the same sense.^[10][3] In Andalusia an almond tree with drooping branches is an almendro desmayo.^[11] In the Canaries the word means “yawn”, and in Gran Canaria also “hunger”.^[12][13]

Timeline

• c. 1230 – desmayo “loss of heart” in Berceo's Vida de San Millán (in an 18th-century copy).^[7][8]
• c. 1330–1335 – Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor, the first record in the DCECH and the BDELC.^[3][4]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary renders Latin exanimatio by el desmaio.^[14]
• 1576 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico, of a desmayo del coraçón “faintness of the heart”.^[15]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from the month of May.^[5]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as a failing of the spirit and of the strength.^[6]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the sense “weeping willow”.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. discouragement, loss of heart: Siguieron buscando sin desmayo.^[2][16]
2. A faint or swoon: a brief loss of consciousness and of strength.^[2][17][1]
3. The weeping willow (sauce de Babilonia).^[2][17]
4. (Canary Islands) A yawn (bostezo).^[12][13]

Related words

• desmayar
• desmayado
• Old French esmaiier

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. desmayo
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 468
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. desmayar
5. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 658
6. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 195
7. ^ 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. desmayo
8. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. desmayo
9. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 309
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1116
11. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 222
12. ^ a b Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. desmayo
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. desmayo
14. ^ 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. desmayo
15. ^ 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. desmayo
16. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. desmayo
17. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. desmayo