especulador

Forms

especulador (feminine especuladora, masculine plural especuladores, feminine plural especuladoras)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin speculātor (“scout, spy, observer”), as the Academy's dictionary and Wiktionary give it.^[2][1][3] Wiktionary also analyses it as from Spanish especular + -dor, and Corominas lists it among the learned derivatives of the family of especular.^[1][4][5]

The Latin agent noun is formed from speculor (“to keep watch, observe”) with -tor; in military Latin it meant a scout or spy.^[6][7][1] The verb comes from specula (“watchtower”), and that from speciō (“to look at”); the Latin noun is a doublet of spectator.^[1][5] Medieval Latin also used it for an estate manager and for a bishop.^[8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word from 1604.^[5][10] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as one who looks at and contemplates things in order to know and understand them.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The first sense was that of the verb especular “to observe, contemplate”: in 1716 a Guatemalan text speaks of curiosos especuladores del idioma “curious students of the language”.^[11][12] The commercial sense came with the verb's “to trade, to seek profit”: Domínguez in 1846 equates the noun with merchant and trader, and Gaspar y Roig apply it to people who spare no means to make money.^[13][14] In 1856 a Nicaraguan text condemns especuladores who sought only their own profit.^[12]

Since 1884 the Academy has defined it as an adjective “that speculates”, used mostly as a noun.^[3][2] Moliner notes that it is generally pejorative, for someone who trades abusively or profits from others' difficulties;^[15][16] Vox keeps a sense of thought beside the financial one of buying goods to sell when prices rise.^[15][16] Malaret recorded it in Puerto Rico in 1917 for someone who trades with tricks.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1435–1500 – the Old Spanish Textual Archive has two occurrences, in a translation of Cicero's rhetoric and in Alfonso de Toledo's Invencionario (1467).^[18]
• 1604 – Corominas's first record.^[5]
• 1716 – first record in the Americas, in Guatemala.^[12]
• 1732 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as one who contemplates things to know them.^[11]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary defines it as a person who speculates.^[19]
• 1884 – the Academy defines it as an adjective used mostly as a noun, and gives the Latin etymology.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. speculating; that speculates, in thought or in trade.^[2][1][16]

Noun

1. A speculator: one who buys goods, land or shares in the hope of selling them at a higher price; often pejorative, of a profiteer.^{[2][15][16][1]}
2. One who speculates or reflects on a subject.^[16][11]

Related words

• especular
• especulación
• especulativo
• espectador
• Latin speculator

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. especulador
3. ^ a b c 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
4. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 739
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. espectáculo
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. speculator
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. speculator
8. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. speculator
9. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre, p. s.v. speculator
10. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 725
11. ^ a b c d 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 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. especulador
13. ^ 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
14. ^ 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
15. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. especulador
16. ^ a b c d e Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. especulador
17. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1999), Vocabulario de Puerto Rico, critical ed. by Humberto López Morales, Madrid: Arco/Libros (1st ed. 1937), p. 189
18. ^ 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
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 387