espacioso

Forms

espacioso (feminine espaciosa, masculine plural espaciosos, feminine plural espaciosas)^[1] Old Spanish texts spell it espacioso, espaçioso and spacioso.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin spatiōsus (“spacious, extensive”), as the Academy's dictionary and Wiktionary give it.^[3][1][4] Corominas lists it among the derivatives of espacio, itself a semi-learned descendant of spatium, and the Spanish Wiktionary analyses it as from Spanish espacio + -oso.^[5][6][7] Wiktionary notes the same surface analysis beside the Latin source.^[1]

The Latin adjective is formed from that noun, “space, extent”, with the suffix -ōsus, and was used of wide areas and of long stretches of time.^[8][1] The same Latin word gave French spacieux and Italian spazioso, and Portuguese espaçoso is recorded from the 14th century.^[9][10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Benevívere cartulary of about 1220–1230 has the spelling spacioso, and Berceo, in the Milagros de Nuestra Señora (stanza 436), uses the word in the sense “quiet, calm, unhurried”.^[2][5][12] The sense “wide, roomy” is clear in Alfonso X's General estoria (c. 1272), where a hunted animal leaves a narrow place for one ancho & espacioso “broad and spacious”.^[13][14]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish espacio meant above all “leisure, calm, delay”, and the adjective followed it: besides Berceo's “calm”, Nebrija glossed espaciosa as “a slow thing”.^[5] Juan de Mena, Alfonso de Palencia and the Celestina already used it for “wide”.^[5] Covarrubias in 1611 separated the two senses, “large and roomy” of a place and “moving with calm” of a person or of slow time.^[15] Cervantes has both: espaciosa llanura “wide plain” and a espaciosa procesión “a slow procession”.^[16] The Diccionario de Autoridades gave them as two senses, “wide, vast” and “slow, deliberate, phlegmatic”.^[17]

The Academy kept “slow, phlegmatic” as a full second sense down to 2001; the current dictionary marks it as rarely used and refers it to despacioso, and Moliner and Vox give it as secondary.^{[18][3][19][20]} In the Americas the word is recorded from 1535 in Mexico City, of a large monastery, and in Santo Domingo in 1548 of people, for “slow”.^[21]

Timeline

• 1220–1230 – the spelling spacioso in the Benevívere cartulary.^[2]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo uses it for “calm, unhurried” in the Milagros.^[6][5]
• c. 1272 – Alfonso X's General estoria uses it for “wide, roomy”.^[13][14]
• 1535 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico City.^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias gives the senses “roomy” and “slow”.^[15]
• 1732 – the Diccionario de Autoridades derives it from Latin and quotes Cervantes.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology from Latin.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. spacious, roomy; wide and extensive: Alquilaron un piso espacioso cerca del río.^[3][19][1]
2. (rare) slow, unhurried; the same as despacioso.^[3][19]

Related words

• espacio
• espaciosidad
• despacioso
• Latin spatiōsus
• Portuguese espaçoso

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. espacioso
3. ^ 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. espacioso
4. ^ 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. 455
5. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 731
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. espacio
7. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. spatiosus
9. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 773
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. spacieux
11. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. espaçoso
12. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 236
13. ^ 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. espacioso
14. ^ a b Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
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. 783
16. ^ 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. 492
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 587
18. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. espacioso
19. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. espacioso
20. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. espacioso
21. ^ a b 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. espacioso