información

Forms

información f (plural informaciones)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin īnfōrmātiō (“formation, conception; teaching”), a noun formed from īnfōrmō (“to give shape to; to describe; to instruct”).^[2][1][3] The Latin verb is in- and fōrmō (“to form, shape”), from fōrma (“form, shape”).^[1][4] In Medieval Latin the word already meant “teaching, instruction”, “guidance” and “information”.^[5]

Corominas dates the noun to 1394 and the verb informar only to 1444, so the noun came into Spanish directly from Latin; the DICCA derives it from the verb.^[6][7] The sense “news, knowledge given” grew under the influence of the Spanish verb.^[4] The same Latin word is French information and Basque informazio, and English has information.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest hit in the CDH is in the Castigos of 1293, where an example is set out a ynformaçion delos Reys “for the instruction of kings”.^[9] The sense “instruction, education” survived into the 19th-century dictionaries as an obsolete figurative use.^[10][2] From 1305 the documents of the Crown of Aragon use informacion for the account or brief an envoy brings: segunt la informacion que trayemos “according to the information we bring”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

In the 14th century the word was often spelt enformaçion.^[9] Its legal sense, the inquiry a court makes into a fact or crime, appears in a royal letter of 1326 on a boundary dispute (in a copy of 1328) and in the Cortes of Briviesca of 1387, and Nebrija gave Latin informatio as its equivalent.^[9][7] In the Americas, a sumaria información is recorded in Panama in 1550, and a información de cristiano viejo y limpio, a proof of “clean” Old Christian descent, in 1584.^[11] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined the act of informing, the legal inquiry, and a philosophical sense, the bringing of form into matter.^[12]

The modern senses are the communication or acquisition of knowledge on a subject, the knowledge itself, and an information office or desk; biology uses the word for the information carried by the sequence of nucleic acids.^[2] Moliner adds the technical sense of the data carried by a message or handled by a machine, measured in bits.^[13]

Timeline

• 1293 – the Castigos uses ynformaçion for the instruction of kings.^[9]
• 1305 – a letter on the talks between the infante Don Juan and James II of Aragon speaks of the informacion the envoys bring.^[9]
• 1387 – the Cortes of Briviesca use enformaçion for a judicial inquiry.^[9]
• 1394 – the date Corominas gives for the word.^[6]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija's Spanish–Latin vocabulary gives Jnformacion. informatio.^[7]
• 1550 – first record in the Americas, in Panama.^[11]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the legal and philosophical senses.^[12]
• 1899 – the Academy marks “education, instruction” as an obsolete figurative sense.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of informing (informar) or being informed.^[2]
2. information: knowledge communicated or acquired about a subject; news, data: No tenemos bastante información para decidir.^[2][13][1]
3. An information office, desk or service: Pregunte en información.^[2]
4. (law) A judicial inquiry into a fact or crime.^[2][13]
5. (chiefly in the plural) Proofs of the qualities a person needs for a post or honour.^[2]
6. (biology) The property of nucleic acids and some other biopolymers that comes from the sequence of their units; genetic information.^[2][13]
7. (obsolete) Education, instruction (educación).^[2][13]

Related words

• informar
• informe
• forma
• Latin īnfōrmātiō
• French information

Usage notes

Legal phrases include información ad perpetuam (or ad perpetuam rei memoriam), an inquiry made by a court so that something is on record for the future.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. información
3. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 383
5. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. forma
7. ^ a b c 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. información
8. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 375
9. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. información
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 556
11. ^ 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. información
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4
13. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. información