espectro

Forms

espectro m (plural espectros)^[1]

Etymology

It is a learned word, borrowed from Latin spectrum (“apparition, image”).^[2][3][1] Corominas places it among the learned words of the family of speciō (“to look”), the archaic verb behind spectō (“to watch”), and so beside espectáculo, espectador and espécimen.^[4][2]

The Latin noun was formed from the verb with the suffix -trum.^[1][5] Its only classical record is in two letters of Cicero and Cassius, which say that the Epicurean Catius used it to render the Greek philosophical term Ancient Greek εἴδωλον (eídōlon, “image”); the word then hardly occurs until Renaissance humanists revived it, around 1500, in the sense “apparition, phantom”.^[1][5][6] The verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *speḱ- (“to look”), which is also continued in Sanskrit and Umbrian.^[7]

The DTME calls the Spanish word a reintroduction and dates it from 1611; the sense of physics is owed to Newton, who used it in English in 1671.^[8] The BDELC gives 1732, the year of the Academy's Diccionario de Autoridades.^[2][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first record is in Covarrubias's Suplemento to his Tesoro (c. 1611), where the espectros of the dead pursue those who killed: son perseguidos por los Lémures (fantasmas) y Larvas («espectros») de los muertos “they are pursued by the Lemures (ghosts) and Larvae (spectres) of the dead”.^[10][8] In 1626 Rodrigo Caro uses it for the bogey children were frightened with, a sombra o espantajo.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Autoridades (1732) defines the word as a vision or image that appears to the sight, usually a horrible one of the devil or a phantom that causes fear, and Feijoo's essays of the 1720s–1740s, which discuss spectros and phantasmas, spread it.^[11][10] By the mid-19th century it also meant a person reduced to skin and bones.^[12][13]

The optical sense arrived through the espectro solar, the coloured band of light split by a prism, in Domínguez (1846) and the Academy's dictionary of 1884; the 1899 edition defined it as the seven simple colours of a refracted ray.^[12][14][15] Today physics uses it for the distribution of any radiation and its graph, medicine for the range of microbes an antibiotic acts on, and general language for the whole range of a class of things, as in el espectro político.^[3][16][17]

Timeline

• c. 1611 – the first record in the CDH, in Covarrubias's Suplemento to the Tesoro.^[10][8]
• 1626 – Rodrigo Caro uses it for a bogey that frightens children.^[10]
• 1732 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records it, the BDELC's date of first record.^[11][2]
• 1769 – the first record from the Americas, in Guatemala.^[18]
• 1846 – Domínguez adds the figurative “emaciated person” and the espectro solar of physics.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. spectrum” and the espectro solar.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A ghost or spectre: the image of a dead person, or any frightening apparition.^[3][16][1]
2. (figurative) A person who has become extremely thin or worn out: Tras la huelga de hambre era un espectro.^[16][19]
3. The whole range of things of one kind, seen together: partidos de todo el espectro ideológico.^[3][17]
4. (physics) The distribution of the intensity of a radiation by wavelength, energy or another magnitude; its graph; the spectrum of light.^[3][8]
5. (medicine) The set of microbial species against which an antibiótico is active, as in de amplio espectro “broad-spectrum”.^[3][19]

Word family

• espectral
• espectroscopio
• espectrógrafo

Related words

• espectáculo
• espectador
• espécimen
• aspecto
• Latin spectrum

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. espectáculo
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. espectro
4. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 739
5. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. spectrum
6. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. spectrum
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. speciō
8. ^ a b c d Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. espectro
9. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 725
10. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. espectro
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 597
12. ^ a b c 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. 744
13. ^ Gaspar y Roig (eds.) (1853–1855), Biblioteca ilustrada de Gaspar y Roig: Diccionario enciclopédico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Imprenta y Librería de Gaspar y Roig, p. 1, 926
14. ^ 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. 458
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 424
16. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. espectro
17. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. espectro
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. espectro
19. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. espectro