hado

Forms

hado m (plural hados)^[1] Old Spanish wrote fado; the spelling hado is in Nebrija.^[2][3]

Etymology

It continues inherited from Latin fātum (“prediction, oracle; destiny”);^[2][4][5][1] Old Spanish wrote it fado.^[2][4][5][1] The Latin noun is the neuter past participle of for (“to speak”), so “what has been said”; it goes back to Proto-Italic *fāto- (“said”) and Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- (“to speak”).^[6][7][1] The Old Spanish /f/ became the aspirate /h/, later silent, the usual development of Latin f- before a vowel.^[2][8]

The same word is Portuguese fado, Catalan fat, Sardinian fadu and Asturian fau, which survives in a phrase for the habits and fortunes that repeat in a family.^{[8][9][2][10]} Basque patu is a loan from Latin or Romance.^[9][2] Spanish has also borrowed the Portuguese word as fado, the name of a song.^[1][2]

Before the Renaissance study of Latin strengthened the masculine, medieval Castilian more often used hada in the same sense; it comes from the Latin neuter plural of the same word, already applied in the Middle Ages to the Fates.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first records are in Berceo's Milagros and his life of Saint Millán.^[2] In the CDH's copy of the latter (c. 1230, known from an 18th-century copy), Honorius's guest sits plañiendo so mal fado “bewailing his ill fate”.^[11] The word is “fate”, good or bad, from the beginning: in Alfonso X's Estoria de España a speaker says that certain signs were made por mostrar me qual auie a seer el mio fado “to show me what my fate was to be”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish also used fado for good fortune, in the Libro de Apolonio.^[3] Compounds were formed early: mal fadado “destined for misfortune” in the late 14th-century Rimado de Palacio, and fadeduro “of hard fate” in Berceo and Juan Ruiz.^[2][4] Nebrija in 1495 has the spelling with h: Hado lo que se hada, Latin fatum.^[13][2] Covarrubias held that strictly it is nothing but the will of God, and the Diccionario de Autoridades contrasted the pagan sense, an inevitable order of things, with the Christian one, and recorded the proverb hados y lados hacen dichosos o desdichados “fates and companions make men happy or unhappy”.^[14][15] The Academy's dictionary of 1884 added the sense of a pagan divinity or unknown force acting on the gods themselves; the DLE now places this sense in the classical tradition.^[16][5] Moliner labels the word literary.^[17]

Timeline

• 1220–1250 – fado in Berceo, the first record.^[2][4]
• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre has mudaredes fado “you will change your fate”.^[11]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España uses fado for a person's destiny.^[12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija writes hado.^[13][2]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records mal hadado and bien hadado.^[14]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary separates the Christian and the pagan senses.^[18]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary adds the sense of a pagan divinity.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. (literary) In the classical tradition, the unknown force that acts irresistibly on gods, men and events; fate: Ni los dioses podían torcer el hado.^[5][1][17]
2. (literary) The fatal chain of events; destiny, lot: Los hados quisieron que no volvieran a verse.^[5][17]

Word family

• hadar
• hadado
• malhadado
• bienhadado

Related words

• hada
• fado
• fatal
• fatídico
• enfadar

Usage notes

In 1551 Oviedo recorded hado as the Venezuelan name of the coca plant, a separate word of Caribbean origin that Friederici writes hayo.^[19][20]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 303
3. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 249
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hado
5. ^ a b c d e 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. hado
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. fātum
8. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 2711
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. fatum
10. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 3, 909
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. hado
12. ^ 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. hado
13. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 360
14. ^ 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. 958
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 121
16. ^ 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. 554
17. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hado
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 460
19. ^ 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. hado
20. ^ Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter, p. 293