hereditario

Forms

hereditario (feminine hereditaria, masculine plural hereditarios, feminine plural hereditarias)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin hereditarius (“of or relating to an inheritance”), a learned doublet of the popular heredero “heir”, which continues the same Latin adjective.^[2][3][4][1] García de Diego also contrasts the learned word with the inherited one and with Portuguese herdeiro.^[5] Used as a noun, the Latin word replaced heres (“heir”) in several Romance languages, as in French héritier, beside the learned héréditaire.^[3][6][7]

The Latin adjective is formed from hereditas (“inheritance”) with the suffix -arius, and that noun is derived from the word for “heir”.^[8][1] De Vaan reconstructs a Proto-Italic stem and derives the noun from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeh₁ro- (“derelict”) with a further suffix, and compares Ancient Greek χῆρος (khêros, “bereaved, empty”) and χήρα (khḗra, “widow”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Old Spanish Textual Archive first has it in Juan Alfonso de Zamora's translation of Valerius Maximus, in a manuscript of 1416–1434.^[10] DEMel lists earlier records in charter collections from 1123 on, and links derecho hereditario “hereditary right” to a Carmona collection of 1249.^[11] Corominas dates it about 1600, from the quotations in Autoridades.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Autoridades defined it as what belongs to an inheritance, quoting Argensola's Conquista de las Malucas and Zúñiga's Anales, where offices are made perpetual and hereditary.^[12] In the Americas it is first recorded in Lima in 1626, for goods of an estate (bienes ereditarios), and in 1655 for an office granted by inheritance.^[13] The modern dictionaries add a second sense, of physical traits, diseases or habits passed from parents to children, which is the sense of genetics in medicine.^[4][14]

Timeline

• 1249 – DEMel links derecho hereditario to a Carmona charter collection.^[11]
• 1416–1434 – the manuscript of Juan Alfonso de Zamora's Valerius Maximus.^[10]
• 1492 – the Spanish translation of Josephus's Jewish War printed in Seville uses it.^[10]
• c. 1600 – Corominas's date for it.^[3]
• 1626 – the first record from the Americas, in Lima.^[13]
• 1734 – Autoridades records it.^[12]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of or relating to an inheritance, or acquired by it: un título hereditario.^[4][1]
2. Of a physical or moral trait, a disease or a habit: passed on from parents to children, hereditary.^[4][15][14]

Related words

• heredero
• heredad
• heredar
• herencia
• Latin hereditarius

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 344
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. heredad
4. ^ 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. hereditario
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 3244
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. héritier
7. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 337
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. hērēditārius
9. ^ 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. hērēs
10. ^ a b c 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, p. s.v. hereditario
11. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. hereditario
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 141
13. ^ 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. hereditario
14. ^ a b Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. hereditario
15. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hereditario