enorme

Forms

enorme m or f (masculine and feminine plural enormes)^[1] Late medieval and Golden Age texts often spell it inorme or ynorme;^[2][3] Cervantes writes inormes in the second part of the Quijote.^[4][2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin ēnormis (“irregular; immense”), a learned word recorded in the 13th century and in general use from the 15th.^[5][4] Corominas dates it 1438.^[6][7][1][5] The Latin adjective is formed from ex- (“out of”) and norma (“carpenter's square, rule”), and first meant “irregular, shapeless”, then “immoderate, immense”.^[8][9] Wiktionary takes norma to be perhaps a borrowing through Etruscan from Ancient Greek γνώμων (gnṓmōn, “carpenter's square”).^[1]

The same Latin word was borrowed as Portuguese enorme (15th century), Catalan enorme and French énorme (1340).^[10][11][12] In Medieval Latin enormis had come to mean “wicked, heinous”, the sense in which the word first entered Spanish.^[13][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest hit is in Alfonso X's Primera Partida (1256–1263, in a copy of about 1290), which still presents it as Latin: si alguno fiziesse grand pecado daquellos que son llamados en latín enormes, que quier tanto dezir cuemo muy desaguisados “if anyone committed a great sin of those called in Latin enormes, which means very outrageous”.^[4][14] The sense is moral, “heinous, wicked”, as in the Catecismo of Pedro de Cuéllar (1325, in a 15th-century copy) and Fernández de Heredia's chronicle (1385).^[4]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias in 1611 explained the word as “without rule or measure”, from norma “the architect's square”, and said that great and disproportionate sins are called enormes and enormísimos.^[15] Autoridades kept both senses, “out of proportion, beyond the regular” and, in morals, “perverse, gravely wicked”, with Quevedo's pecados mas enormes.^[16] The Academy's dictionaries from 1817 to 2001 defined it as “immoderate, excessive” and “grave, base”, and since 1869 have sent the reader to the legal term lesión enorme.^{[17][18][19][20]} The current DLE reduces it to a single sense, “much larger than normal”.^[7] In colloquial use it can also praise a person as outstanding.^[21][22]

Timeline

• 1256–1263 – Alfonso X's Primera Partida cites enormes as a Latin word for heinous sins.^[4]
• 1385 – Fernández de Heredia's Gran crónica de España uses it of crimes.^[4]
• 1438 – Corominas's date of first record.^[6]
• 1534 – delitos graves e ynormes “grave and heinous crimes” in Nicaragua.^[3]
• 1604 – the derivative enormidad is first recorded.^[6]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from norma, the square.^[15]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades separates the physical and the moral sense.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology, “from Latin enormis”.^[19]

Meanings

Adjective

1. enormous, huge: much bigger than normal: Vivían en una casa enorme junto al río.^[7][1]
2. (dated) excessive, beyond measure.^[20]
3. (dated) Perverse, heinous.^[20][22]
4. (colloquial) Outstanding, excellent; also, comically outrageous: Ese actor estuvo enorme anoche.^[21][22]

Word family

• enormidad
• enormemente

Related words

• norma
• normal

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 467
3. ^ a b c 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. enorme
4. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. enorme
5. ^ a b 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. enorme
6. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. norma
7. ^ a b c 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. enorme
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. enorme
11. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. enorme
12. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
13. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
14. ^ 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. enorme
15. ^ 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. 743
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 483
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 364
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 313
19. ^ 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. 432
20. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. enorme
21. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. enorme
22. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. enorme