especioso

Forms

especioso (feminine especiosa, masculine plural especiosos, feminine plural especiosas)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin speciōsus (“beautiful, good-looking”), a learned word.^[2][3][4][1] Corominas explains the Latin adjective from the sense “fine appearance” that its base speciēs also had.^[2][3] The noun meant “sight, look, appearance”, and so the Latin adjective could also mean “showy” and “deceptive in appearance”.^[5][6][7]

The same Latin word gave French spécieux, Italian specioso and Portuguese especioso.^[1][6][8] Corominas notes an isolated earlier instance in Berceo with the sense “calm”; the Tentative Dictionary suggests that one medieval instance is a slip for espacioso.^[2][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word from 1639, in Luis Muñoz.^[2][3] The Diccionario de Autoridades quotes Muñoz's life of Fray Luis de Granada for the sense “exquisite, carefully wrought”: ricas y preciosas, especiosas, y superiores à las cosas terrénas “rich and precious, exquisite, and above earthly things”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Autoridades gave two senses, “exquisite, perfectly done” and “apparent, coloured, dressed up with deceit”, quoting Saavedra Fajardo on the fine names with which the Romans disguised their tyranny.^[10] From 1817 the Academy defined it as “beautiful, precious, perfect” and, figuratively, “apparent, deceptive”, and the two senses still stand in the current dictionary.^[11][4] The deceptive sense now prevails: Moliner labels it learned, and Vox defines the word only as “seemingly logical but deceptive”.^[12][13] In the Americas it is recorded from 1794 in Lima and Bogotá, already in phrases such as especioso pretexto.^[14]

Timeline

• 1491 – the Old Spanish Textual Archive has the word in Diego de San Pedro's Arnalte y Lucenda, printed in Burgos.^[15]
• 1639 – Corominas's first record, in Luis Muñoz.^[2][3]
• 1732 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the senses “exquisite” and “deceptive”.^[10]
• 1794 – first records in the Americas, in Lima and Bogotá.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology from Latin.^[16]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (dated) beautiful, precious, perfect.^[4][12]
2. specious: apparently sound but deceptive: Nos dio una excusa especiosa para no venir.^[4][13][1]

Related words

• especie
• especiosidad
• Latin speciōsus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 738
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. especie
4. ^ 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. especioso
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. speciosus
6. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. spécieux
7. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 725
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1419
9. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 237
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 597
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 387
12. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. especioso
13. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. especioso
14. ^ 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. especioso
15. ^ 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
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 458