maitines

Forms

maitines m pl (plural only)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Catalan maitines, a western Catalan form beside standard matines, rather than Old Occitan matinas.^[2][3][4] Corominas, the BDELC and the DLE take these as feminine plurals of matí (“morning”) (dialectal maití), from mātūtīnum (“morning”), short for a phrase with tempus (“time”), “morning time”.^[2][3][4][1] Meyer-Lübke instead took the Spanish word from Old Occitan maiti.^[5] Prat Sabater counts it among the words for which the DCECH allows either Catalan or Occitan as the direct source.^[6]

mātūtīnus (“of the early morning”) is formed from Mātūta, the goddess of dawn, related to māne (“in the morning”).^[7][2] Corominas explains the diphthong of the Catalan form from a vulgar contracted Vulgar Latin *mattinus, whose /tt/ was taken for /kt/ by hypercorrection, giving *mactinus.^[2] In Church Latin the adjective, used as a masculine or feminine noun, named the morning office, “matins, lauds”.^[8] The learned doublet is matutino, first in the 15th century.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has the form matines: the abbot Don Sancho rezava los matines abuelta de los albores “was saying matins at the break of dawn”.^[9][2][3] The form with ai appears in the Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250, in an early 15th-century copy): ora de maitines tañer “the hour to ring for matins”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Berceo has both matines and matinas, and in the 15th century Rodríguez de Almela still alternates maitines and matines; the BDELC dates maitines itself from 1343.^[2][3] Nebrija rendered it as Latin horae matutinae.^[10][11] Covarrubias described it in 1611 as the night office sung from midnight on, named because the hours move towards the morning, and recorded maytinante “one who goes to matins”.^[12] Autoridades added the jocular phrases hacer maitines and tocar a maitines, for wives going through their husbands' pockets at night while they sleep.^[13]

The Academy's 1843 dictionary defined it as the first of the canonical hours, formerly said before dawn and still said so in many churches.^[14] Its 1884 edition derived it directly from Latin matutinus; today's DLE gives the Catalan route.^[15][4]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has matines.^[9][2][3]
• c. 1236 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos: Los matines cantados.^[9]
• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre has maitines.^[9]
• 1250 – the Romance version of the Cortes de Coyanza has matines, the first record in a contemporary copy.^[9]
• 1343 – the BDELC's date for maitines.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: horae matutinae.^[10]
• 1558 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the night office.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy derives it from Latin matutinus.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. (plural) matins: the first of the canonical hours, said between midnight and dawn, before laudes: Los monjes se levantan a las cuatro para rezar maitines.^[4][1][17]

Word family

• maitinante

Related words

• matutino
• mañana
• Latin mātūtīnus
• Catalan matí

Usage notes

The word is masculine and used only in the plural.^[4][1] Moliner gives the older matines as a synonym.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 833
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. maitines
4. ^ a b c d e 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. maitines
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ Prat Sabater, Marta (2003), Préstamos del catalán en el léxico español, doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, p. 33
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. mātūtīnus
8. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. matutinus
9. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. maitines
10. ^ a b 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. maitines
11. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 375
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. 1104
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 458
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 451
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 663
16. ^ 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. maitines
17. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. maitines
18. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. maitines