ese

Forms

ese m sg (feminine esa, neuter eso, masculine plural esos, feminine plural esas)^[1][2] Old Spanish had es, esse and essi;^[3][4] Aragonese texts write ex, exe and later ixe.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin ipse (“himself, the same”).^[3][5][1] The regular outcome was Old Spanish es, used in the Cid, the Libro de Alexandre and Berceo; it was replaced by ese on the model of este.^[3] Berceo also has essi, which survives as Asturian esi.^[3][6] In Aragon the form is Aragonese exe, which goes with Catalan eix and Occitan eis, from a popular pronunciation Vulgar Latin *icse, as in caixa from capsa.^[3]

The same Latin word is Portuguese esse, Galician ese, Italian esso and Romanian îns.^[7][8] Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan turned the pronoun of identity into a demonstrative, probably through its use to avoid repetition; in Italian the word became a personal pronoun of the third person.^[3] It forms the three-term system of Spanish demonstratives with the word from Latin iste and with aquel.^[9] The compound aquese is from Vulgar Latin *eccum ipse.^[3][5]

The Latin pronoun is a compound of is and a particle -pse.^[10] De Vaan derives the second part from *-pe-so, with the pronoun Proto-Indo-European *so.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds essa as early as 1100 and the regular form es in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140).^[3][5] In the Cid the hero camps on the gravel cabo essa villa “by that town”.^[12] The Fuero de Madrid has esse in 1202.^[3][12]

Semantic evolution

In Berceo the word is sometimes still a plain anaphoric pronoun, almost “the same”, and phrases such as eso … que “the same as” keep the old meaning; in the Guzmán de Alfarache eso te importa ir solo que acompañado means “it is all the same to you”.^[3] In the epic and the ballads ese could weaken to a kind of article, as in Por essa puerta de Elvira in Pérez de Hita; in Majorca and parts of Catalonia this became the article es, sa.^[3][13] Alfonso X's prose already has esso mismo “likewise”.^[14]

Placed after the noun, ese expresses contempt: el tipo ese.^[2][15] In letters, esa names the town where the addressee lives.^[2][16] In Argentina ese is often used where aquel would be expected, as in ese día.^[3] In Mexico ese is an informal greeting, and in the United States it means “man, guy”.^[1][17]

Timeline

• 1100 – the earliest record, essa.^[3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has es and essa.^[3][12]
• 1202 – the Fuero de Madrid has esse.^[3]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses esso and esso mismo.^[14]
• 1536 – the first record from the Americas, in Panama.^[18]
• 1843 – the Academy records eso mismo and ni por esas.^[19]
• 1917 – Alemany gives the etymology from Latin ipse.^[20]

Meanings

Determiner

1. that: near the person spoken to: Pásame ese vaso.^[2][1]
2. That: just mentioned or about to be mentioned: Esos zapatos son los que quiero, los negros.^[2]
3. (colloquial; after the noun) Expresses contempt: No aguanto al vecino ese.^[2][15]

Pronoun

1. That one: the person or thing near the person spoken to: Prefiero ese.^[2]
2. That one: what has just been mentioned or is about to be mentioned; the neuter eso refers to a fact or idea: Eso es lo que pienso.^[2][16]
3. (colloquial) A person at some distance or who has just left, often with contempt.^[2]
4. (feminine) In letters, the town where the addressee lives: Llegaré a esa el martes.^[2][16]

Word family

• esotro
• aquese

Related words

• este
• aquel
• mismo
• Latin ipse
• Portuguese esse

Usage notes

In the pronoun senses ese, esa, esos and esas may be written ése, ésa, ésos, ésas when there is a risk of ambiguity; the neuter eso never takes an accent.^[2][16] Set phrases include a eso de “at about”, en eso “just then”, ni por esas “not even so” and y eso que “even though”.^[2] A separate noun ese is the name of the letter s, as in hacer eses “to zigzag”, said of a drunk.^[2][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. ese
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 722
4. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 235
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ese
6. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. esi
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. ipse
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1435
9. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. ese
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ 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. ese
13. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. es
14. ^ 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. ese
15. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. ese
16. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ese
17. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. ese
18. ^ 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. ese
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 315
20. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 704