hender

Forms

hender (first-person singular present hiendo, first-person singular preterite hendí, past participle hendido)^[1] Old Spanish wrote fender (participle fendido); hender is found from Nebrija on.^[2] The present was first fende, as the Latin requires, and later, by analogy, fiende, which is already in the 15th-century Aragonese manuscript of the Libro de Alexandre.^[2] A variant hendir is late and is today American.^[2] Santander has jender, jander and fendir, and Asturian keeps fender.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish fender, inherited from Latin findere (“to split, cleave”).^[2][5][6][1] The same Latin verb is Portuguese fender, Galician fender, Asturian fender, Catalan fendre, French fendre and Italian fendere.^[7][3][1]

The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Italic *findō, a present with a nasal infix, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyd- (“to split”).^[8][1] Its cognates include Gothic 𐌱𐌴𐌹𐍄𐌰𐌽 (beitan, “to bite”) and Old English bītan, the source of English bite.^[8][9][1]

Corominas notes that the verb was frequent and popular in the Middle Ages, but later lost ground and became a literary word.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest record is in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy), on the blood of Christ at Calvary: cayo la sangre yuso e fendio la penna “the blood fell down and split the rock”.^[10] Corominas's first record is Berceo's Loores, where the veil of the temple fue fendido “was rent”.^[2][10]

Semantic evolution

From the first texts the verb meant to split or cleave a solid thing;^[11] Alfonso X's Lapidario speaks of surgeons who must fender o taiar “cut open or cut”.^[11] Covarrubias recorded the phrases hender el cabello “to be very sharp” and hendérsele a uno la cabeza de dolor “to have a splitting headache”, and the sense of making one's way through a crowd.^[12] The Diccionario de Autoridades quoted this last sense from Cervantes's Novelas and gave the colloquial está que hiende “he is very fat”.^[13] In 1817 the Academy marked as poetic the sense of cutting through a liquid or the air.^[14]

In the Americas the word is recorded from 1515, and often for the split ears of branded livestock or of punished adulterers.^[15] Its derivative hendidura was earlier hendedura;^[5][2] rendija “chink” comes from rehendija, a derivative of hendija, which is still the common word in much of the Americas.^[5][2]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar has fendio “split”.^[10]
• 1236–1246 – Berceo's Loores has the participle fendido.^[2][10]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses fender for cutting open.^[11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin findo for hender; the spelling with h- dates from him.^[16][2]
• 1515 – first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[15]
• 1611 – Covarrubias lists hender el cabello and hender por medio de la gente.^[12]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades notes the diphthong of hiendo and the phrase está que hiende.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology Latin findere.^[17]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also pronominal) To split or cleave a solid body without dividing it completely: El hacha hendió el tronco de arriba abajo.^[6][1]
2. (transitive) To cut through a liquid or the air: La gaviota hendía el viento.^[6][18]
3. (transitive, also intransitive) To force one's way through a crowd or a mass of things.^[6][18]

Word family

• hendidura
• hendija
• rendija
• hendimiento
• hendible
• hendedor

Related words

• fisura
• fisión
• Latin findō
• Catalan fendre

Usage notes

Hender is conjugated like entender: hiendo, hiendes, hendemos.^[18][1] The regular-stem variant hendir is used beside it, above all in the Americas.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. 3, 341
3. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 2801
4. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. fender
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hender
6. ^ 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. hender
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ 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. hender
11. ^ a b c 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. hender
12. ^ 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. 969
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 138
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 464
15. ^ 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. hender
16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 361
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 560
18. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hender