fallecer

Forms

fallecer (first-person singular present fallezco, first-person singular preterite fallecí, past participle fallecido)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote fallescer, fallesçer and falleçer.^[2][1]

Etymology

Corominas treats it as a derivative of Old Spanish fallir “to fail, be lacking”, formed from Spanish fallir + -ecer.^[3][4][5] The Academy and García de Diego instead derive it from an inchoative verb of Latin, *fallescere, built on Latin fallō (“to deceive”), and the Portuguese dictionaries derive falecer from the same form.^[6][7][8][9]

The older verb continues the same Latin verb, which meant “to deceive” and “to escape notice”;^[1] Wiktionary gives the Vulgar Latin form as *fallīre, with a change of conjugation.^[3][1] Medieval Latin texts already use the verb in the sense “to fail, be lacking”.^[10][11] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *sgʷʰh₂el- (“to stumble”) behind the Latin verb and compares Sanskrit and Armenian verbs for “to stumble” and Ancient Greek σφάλλω (sphállō, “to bring down”).^[12][1] Corominas explains the kept /f/ of the family partly by its archaic character and partly by the same reasons as in falso and falta.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) has the verb in its old sense “to run short, be lacking”: Si essa despensa vos falleciere o vos menguare algo “if those provisions fail you or you lack anything”.^[13][3][4]

Semantic evolution

Through the Middle Ages fallecer had the same senses as fallir: “to be lacking”, “to fail”, “to err, sin”.^[3][14] The sense “to die” appears in the prose of Alfonso X: a man fue falleciendo poco a poco “wasted away little by little” and died.^[14] In the 16th century the general sense became old-fashioned;^[15] Juan de Valdés preferred faltar, and since then the verb has been used, outside a few archaising authors, only as a euphemism for “to die”.^[3][4][15] Ser fallecido meant “to die” as early as 1438.^[3]

The 1732 Autoridades still gave “to be lacking or come to an end” first and “to die” second; the Academy's 1817 edition put “to die” first and labelled most of the other senses obsolete.^[16][17] Portuguese falecer went the same way;^[18] Nascentes suggests that the sense “to die” came through phrases like falecer por morte “to be missing through death”.^[18]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses the verb for provisions that run short.^[13][3]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (in a 13th-century copy) uses falleçio in a passage on Joseph in Egypt.^[13]
• 1218–1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes has fallecieren of shoes that come apart at the seams.^[13]
• c. 1250 – the derivative fallecimiento is first recorded, in the Setenario.^[3][4]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España uses the verb of a man wasting away to death.^[14]
• 1438 – ser fallecido already means “to die”.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses finar, fallecer, morir with Latin defungor.^[19]
• 1525 – the first record in the Americas, in Mexico City.^[20]
• 1732 – the Diccionario de Autoridades gives “to be lacking” first and “to die” second.^[16]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary gives “to die” as the main sense.^[17]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To die, pass away: Su abuela falleció la semana pasada.^[6][1]
2. (intransitive, rare) Of a thing: to run out, come to an end.^[6]
3. (obsolete) To lack, be in need of something.^[6][14]
4. (obsolete) To fail, err; to commit a fault.^[6]
5. (obsolete) To desist from an undertaking.^[6]

Word family

• fallecimiento
• fallecido
• desfallecer

Related words

• fallir
• fallido
• falta
• faltar
• Portuguese falecer
• Latin fallō

Usage notes

The verb is conjugated like agradecer: fallezco, fallezca.^[16][21] In modern Spanish it is the formal or euphemistic word for morir.^[3][22]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. fallecer
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 845
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. fallido
5. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. fallecer
6. ^ 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. fallecer
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2663
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1519
9. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. falecer
10. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
11. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. fallecer
14. ^ a b c d 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. fallecer
15. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. fallecer
16. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 712
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 410
18. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. falecer
19. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. fallecer
20. ^ 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. fallecer
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. fallecer
22. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. fallecer