mísero

Forms

mísero (feminine mísera, masculine plural míseros, feminine plural míseras)^[1]

Etymology

It is a learned borrowing, borrowed from Latin miser (“wretched, unfortunate”).^[2][3][1] The Latin adjective was inherited in only a few old Romance forms, among them Aromanian measer and Old French mezre.^[4] Its cognates include Italian misero and Asturian mísere “stingy; poor”.^[1][5]

The Latin adjective goes back to Proto-Italic *misro-; de Vaan finds no acceptable Indo-European pedigree, notes a possible link with maereō (“to grieve”) and queries a reconstruction Proto-Indo-European *mh₂isro-.^[6] Wiktionary also compares Ancient Greek μῖσος (mîsos, “hatred”).^[1] From the same Latin adjective Spanish took miseria, miserable, misérrimo and misericordia.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas and Segura Munguía date the word to 1438, in the sense “unhappy, wretched”.^[2][7]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th century mísero is “unfortunate, wretched”: the Lazarillo calls a priest desventurado y mísero, and Autoridades defines it simply as miserable.^[8] It is common in exclamations such as ¡mísero de mí! “woe is me!”, which corresponds to Latin vae misero mihi.^[9][10] Terreros (1786–1793) has it for “stingy, mean”, and today the DLE gives the senses “unhappy”, “dejected”, “miserly” and “of little value”.^[11][3] In the Americas it is recorded from 1548 on, and in 16th-century Mexico City also in the form mísere.^[12] The irregular superlative is misérrimo (1515), from Latin miserrimus.^[7]

Timeline

• 1438 – first record according to Corominas.^[2]
• 1483 – Juan de Lucena's Diálogo de vita beata, the earliest text with the word in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[13]
• 1515 – the superlative misérrimo.^[2]
• 1548 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico City.^[12]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary first gives a Latin etymology.^[14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Unhappy, wretched, unfortunate: ¡Mísero de mí!^[3][9][1]
2. Dejected, without strength.^[3]
3. Stingy, miserly.^[3][1]
4. Of little value, paltry: Me pagaron unos míseros euros.^[3][1]

Word family

• misérrimo

Related words

• misericordia
• Latin miser

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mísero
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. mísero
4. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5600
5. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. mísere
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 465
8. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 577
9. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mísero
10. ^ 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. 438
11. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 2, 594
12. ^ 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. mísere
13. ^ 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. misero
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 664