discutir

Forms

discutir (first-person singular present discuto, first-person singular preterite discutí, past participle discutido)^[1] Juan del Encina's rustic vocabulary has descutir, and Terreros notes the same form in Fray Luis de León.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin discutere (“to shatter, disperse; to decide”).^[2][4][5][1] The Latin verb is formed from dis- (“apart”) and quatiō (“to shake”).^[6][7] Its sense “to examine, discuss”, foreign to classical Latin, appears in ecclesiastical writers of the 5th century, replacing disceptō and disputō, and is common to all the Romance languages;^[8] Livy's use with disceptātiō, “to settle a dispute”, comes close to it.^[2] Medieval Latin used it for examining, interrogating, judging a case and deliberating on a question.^[8]

The base verb goes back to Proto-Italic *kʷat-i-; de Vaan connects it with Germanic verbs for “to shake” such as Old High German scutten, tentatively reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *(s)kuot-i-, and considers that it may be a non-Indo-European word.^[9] Popular descendants of the same Latin family are acudir and sacudir; learned ones are percutir and repercutir.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first dated record is in Enrique de Villena's Tratado de consolación (1424), in the Latin sense “to dispel”: death discutes los sueños de la vida pasada “scatters the dreams of the past life”.^[10] Corominas dates the word to the mid-15th century, in the Latinising poets Juan de Mena and Gómez Manrique and in Alonso de Palencia.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

In the 15th century discutir was a word of Latinising writers;^[11] Nebrija did not record it, and before then Spanish used contender for the sense.^[2] It became frequent in the second half of the 16th century, in Fray Luis de Granada, Fray Luis de León and Venegas.^[2][11] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1732) defined it as examining the details of a matter carefully to find out the truth.^[12] The Academy's 1869 edition added the delivering of speeches, as in parliamentary debate, and Domínguez in 1846–1847 already gave “to debate, dispute”.^[13][14] The DLE now lists the sense “to argue against someone's opinion”, mostly intransitive.^[5]

Popular senses of the Americas include “to treat someone” in Mexico, “to share out, as cigarettes” and “to drink” in the youth slang of El Salvador, and the pronominal “to show off” in Mexico.^[15]

Timeline

• 1424 – Enrique de Villena uses discutir “to dispel”.^[10]
• mid-15th century – Juan de Mena and Gómez Manrique use the word.^[2][4]
• c. 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary glosses discutio as “to shake apart”, but his Spanish–Latin one leaves the word out.^[16][2]
• 1577 – the derivative discusión is first recorded.^[2][4]
• 1732 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as careful examination of a matter.^[12]
• 1821 – first records in the Americas, from Chihuahua.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology, Latin discutere “to dispel, resolve”.^[18]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) Of two or more people: to examine a subject closely; to discuss, debate: El consejo discutirá el presupuesto el lunes.^[5][1]
2. (mostly intransitive) To argue, to dispute against another's view: Siempre discuten por el dinero.^[5][1]
3. (transitive) To question or contradict something said or ordered by another.^[19][5]
4. (mathematics) To examine how a general solution applies to particular cases.^[19]
5. (Mexico, popular) To treat someone, to invite.^[15]

Word family

• discutible
• discutidor

Related words

• discusión
• sacudir
• acudir
• percutir
• repercutir
• Latin discutiō

Usage notes

The set phrase discutir sobre el sexo de los ángeles means to argue about something pointless.^[1]

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 Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 501
3. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 1, 686
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. discutir
5. ^ a b c d e 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. discutir
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. discutio
7. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 234
8. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. discutere
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 Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. discutir
11. ^ a b 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, 1253
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 300
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 284
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. 628
15. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. discutir
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. discutir
17. ^ 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. discutir
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 391
19. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. discutir