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ligero

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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word ligero

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1220–1250 Berceo More words from the 13th century
Borrowed from
Old French legier via Old Spanish
Ultimate origin
Latin levis
Derivations

Pronunciation

  • /liˈxeɾo/, [liˈxe.ɾo][1]

Forms

ligero (feminine ligera, masculine plural ligeros, feminine plural ligeras)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish ligero, borrowed from Old French legier (“light”) (modern léger), from Vulgar Latin *leviārius, a derivative of Latin levis (“light”) with the same meaning.[2][3][4][1][5] The Vulgar Latin adjective implies a form *levius beside the classical one, which Old French liége attests.[6][7]

Corominas notes that the word is native to French, Occitan and Catalan, and that French passed it as a loan to the other western Romance languages.[2] Catalan lleuger and Old Occitan leugier thus continue it directly, while Italian leggiero and Portuguese ligeiro were taken from French like the Spanish word.[8][2] In Spain it has almost entirely replaced the older native adjective liviano; the learned leve was taken from Latin later.[2] In Asturias the word is llixeru.[2] García de Diego took llibiero of Cabranes for a native outcome of the Vulgar Latin word, but Corominas explains it as a local cross of the native adjective with the loan.[2][9]

De Vaan derives the Latin adjective from *leχu- and *h₁legʷʰ-u- (“light”), related to Ancient Greek ἐλαχύς (elakhús, “small, little”) and the Germanic family of the English word light.[10] Wiktionary reconstructs *h₁léngʰus, with the nasal of most other languages, and adds Sanskrit लघु (laghú, “light, quick”).[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds it first in Berceo, and the BDELC dates it 1220–1250; the DEMel's earliest records are Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo of about 1230 and the Libro de Alexandre.[2][3][11] In Alfonso X's prose it already has the main senses “light in weight”, “quick, agile” and “slight, of little importance”: the Picatrix speaks of enfermedades ligeras “mild illnesses”.[12]

Semantic evolution

The word has been frequent in every period.[2] Covarrubias in 1611 gave it as “quick, light”, mentioned caballos ligeros “light horse”, the opposite of the heavy cavalry, and creerse de ligero “to believe too easily”, and guessed it was formed from Latin levis and gero.[13] The Diccionario de Autoridades repeated that guess and defined it as “light”, “quick, agile” and “fickle”.[14] The Academy's edition of 1817 added light sleep, food that is easy to digest, the adverb ligero and, in the cant of thieves, a woman's cloak.[15]

In 1855 Baralt condemned estilo ligero, conversación ligera and comida ligera as Gallicisms; the Chilean Román answered that ligero in Spanish already meant “of little weight or substance”.[16] Across much of Latin America ligero is also an adverb meaning “soon, quickly”: ven ligero.[17][18][19] The DLE now adds senses of physics and chemistry.[4]

Timeline

  • 1220–1250 – first record, in Berceo.[2][3]
  • 1250 – Alfonso X's Lapidario is its first text in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.[20]
  • c. 1275 – the derivative ligereza appears in the Primera Crónica General.[2]
  • 1516 – first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo, in descomulgando de ligero “excommunicating rashly”.[21]
  • 1584 – the derivative aligerar appears.[2][3]
  • 1611 – Covarrubias proposes levis + gero as its origin.[13]
  • 1817 – the Academy records the senses for sleep and food and the cant word for a cloak.[15]
  • 1884 – the Academy derives it from Sanskrit; in 1899 from Gothic.[22][23]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. light, not heavy: Llevaba una mochila muy ligera.[4][1]
  2. agile, quick, nimble.[4]
  3. Of sleep: light, easily broken by the least noise.[4]
  4. Slight, of little importance (leve).[4]
  5. Of food: easily digested.[4]
  6. Fickle, changeable (inconstante).[4]
  7. (physics) Of an atom: having a nucleus of few nucleons, like helium.[4]
  8. (chemistry) Of a fraction: being the first produced in a distillation.[4]

Adverb

  1. (Latin America) Soon, quickly, without delay.[17][24]

Word family

  • ligereza
  • aligerar

Usage notes

A la ligera means “hastily, without thinking” and also “without fuss, with less comfort or company than is usual”;[4][15] de ligero means “without thinking”.[4][15]

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 Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 636
  3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ligero
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. ligero
  5. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. ligero
  6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. léger
  7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. ligero
  8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. *leviarius
  9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 3846
  10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  11. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. ligero
  12. ^ 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. ligero
  13. ^ 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. 1086
  14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 405
  15. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 530
  16. ^ Román, Manuel Antonio (1901–1918), Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, 5 vols., Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de San José, p. 805
  17. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 507
  18. ^ Garzón, Tobías (1910), Diccionario argentino, Barcelona: Imprenta Elzeviriana de Borrás y Mestres, p. 280
  19. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 663
  20. ^ 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. ligero
  21. ^ 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. ligero
  22. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 645
  23. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 603
  24. ^ Malaret, Augusto (1999), Vocabulario de Puerto Rico, critical ed. by Humberto López Morales, Madrid: Arco/Libros (1st ed. 1937), p. 233

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Ligero.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/ligero. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

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