juez

Forms

juez m or f by sense (plural jueces, feminine juez or jueza, feminine plural jueces or juezas)^[1] Old Spanish had júdez, juiz and juyz beside juez;^[1] juiz, the Portuguese form, is found in Castile and León in the 13th century.^[2][3] Until about 1600 the word was mostly pronounced in two syllables, jú-ez;^[1] Ercilla, the Argensolas, Tirso and Quevedo already treat it as one syllable.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish júdez, inherited from Latin iudex (“judge”).^[2][4][5][1] Corominas calls it a semi-learned descendant: the accusative iudicem passed through júez, still of two syllables, to the modern form.^[2][4] Menéndez Pidal and García de Diego had derived it from the nominative, Hanssen, Ford and Espinosa from the accusative, with the vowel after the stress kept as in other semi-learned words;^[6] Corominas sides with the latter, since the nominative does not explain the final ⟨-z⟩ or the Portuguese form ⟨juiz⟩.^[2] The ⟨d⟩ was lost even in this half-learned word because the syllables after the stress of a proparoxytone were said quickly and weakly, and the stress then moved to the more open vowel.^[2]

The same Latin word is Romanian jude, Italian giudice, French juge, Occitan jutge, Catalan jutge and Portuguese juiz.^[6] García de Diego adds Galician xuíz and an Old Aragonese judge.^[7][1] The French word owes its form to the verb juger.^[6]

The Latin word is a compound of ius (“law”) and the root of dīcō (“to say, declare”).^[8][1] De Vaan reconstructs *jowes-dik- (“judge”).^[9] The French historical dictionary, following Benveniste, takes it as “the one who shows the law by speaking”.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are charters: judez in 1129 and 1148, juez in 1146, from Oelschläger's list.^[2][4] In Alfonso X's astrological Judizios de las estrellas (1254) the judge is named beside the king: „el rey o el iuez le aiudara” “the king or the judge will help him”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose already has the judge with power to try and sentence, a person named to settle a dispute, and the Judges of Israel; in his book of games (1283) juyz is also a chess piece.^[11] Covarrubias lists many kinds of judge, from juez ordinario and juez delegado to juez árbitro and juez pedáneo.^[12] Autoridades adds the person who gives an opinion on a question and the judges of jousts and literary contests.^[13] Cejador records the proverb a jueces galicianos, con los pies en las manos, about country people bringing poultry, held by the feet, to judges.^[14]

The Academy also uses it for the leaders who together ruled Castile in its early days.^[5] Sport has the umpire or referee and the juez de línea who watches the touchlines.^[1][15] In the Americas there are many named judges and officials, for example of cockfights in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico and of horse races in Bolivia.^[16]

Timeline

• 1129 – judez in a charter.^[2][4]
• 1146 – juez in a charter.^[2][4]
• 1252 – juiz in a document from Calatrava.^[2]
• 1254 – Alfonso X's Judizios de las estrellas.^[11]
• 1283 – juyz, a piece in Alfonso X's book of chess.^[11]
• 1525 – the first record in the Americas, a juez apostólico in Mexico City.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias lists the kinds of judge.^[12]
• c. 1600 – the two-syllable pronunciation jú-ez gives way to one syllable.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A judge: a person with the authority and power to try cases and pass sentence: La juez dictó sentencia ayer.^[5][1]
2. A member of a jury or panel.^[5]
3. A person appointed to settle a question, especially a doubt or a dispute; an arbiter.^[5]
4. (sports) An umpire, referee or official.^[1][15]
5. (Bible) Each of the supreme magistrates of the people of Israel.^[5]
6. (history) Each of the leaders who jointly governed Castile in its early days.^[5]
7. (colloquial, rare, feminine) The wife of a judge.^[5]

Related words

• juicio
• juzgado
• juzgar
• judicial
• judicatura
• Latin iudex

Usage notes

The feminine is la juez or la jueza.^[5][1] In Tabasco and Chihuahua, Mexico, uneducated speech was said to pronounce the initial ⟨j⟩ as /f/, fuez.^[18] In the Canaries juez is also the round piece of wood laid on the grapes or cheese in a press, perhaps from Portuguese juiz.^[19][20]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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, 536
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. juez
4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. juez
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. juez
6. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4599
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
11. ^ 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. juez
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. 1022
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 327
14. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1908–1914), Tesoro de la lengua castellana: origen y vida del lenguaje, 12 vols., Madrid: Perlado, Páez y Compañía
15. ^ a b Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 343
16. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer
17. ^ 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. juez
18. ^ Henríquez Ureña, Pedro (2015), Obras completas, vol. 12: 1936–1940 III, ed. Miguel D. Mena, Santo Domingo: Ministerio de Cultura
19. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org
20. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. juez