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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word mal

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
c. 1140 Cantar de mio Cid More words from the 12th century
Inherited from
Latin male
Ultimate origin
Latin malus
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
Latin mālum
Latin mālus
French mal
Spanish malo
Latin male
Italian male
Spanish mal
From the same root
Latin cotōneum ← mālum
Latin malifātius ← mālus
Latin malitia ← mālus
English malformation ← mal
French malgré ← mal
French malheur ← mal
Latin maledīcō ← male
Latin maledicus ← male
Latin maleficus ← male
Latin malignus ← male

Pronunciation

  • /ˈmal/, [ˈmal][1]

Forms

mal (comparative peor)[1]

Etymology

The adverb is inherited from Latin male (“badly”), the adverb of malus (“bad”).[2][3][4][1] It is found from the earliest texts and is common to the whole of Romance.[2] The same Latin adverb is Portuguese mal, Catalan mal, French mal and Italian male, which are also nouns meaning “evil”.[5][6]

The noun, also found in the Cid, is according to Corominas the adverb used as a noun in Romance, a use common to all the Romance languages.[2][3] Wikcionario, DICCA-XV and Cunha's Portuguese dictionary derive the noun instead from Latin malum (“evil”), the neuter of the adjective.[7][8][9] The DLE puts the noun senses under the shortened form of the adjective malo.[10]

The Latin adjective has a cognate in Oscan mallom (“bad”).[11] De Vaan sets up Proto-Indo-European *mol-o- (“bad”) with a question mark and considers the further cognates uncertain.[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) the word is a noun meaning “harm”: „Cid, en el nuestro mal vós non ganades nada” “Cid, you gain nothing by our harm”.[12] The adverb is in the Cid too.[2] The Cortes of León of 1208, the first record in a text preserved in its original, have it as an adverb: aquella cosa mal tomada “the thing wrongly taken”.[12]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used the noun for harm, misfortune and illness: the Auto de los Reyes Magos (c. 1180) has „Dios te curie de mal” “God keep you from harm”, and the Liber regum says of a king that he died of an ailment in his feet.[12] In Berceo it can also mean “crime”.[2] Nebrija glossed the noun as Latin malum and the adverb as male, improbe.[13][8] Covarrubias defined it as the opposite of bien.[14] Autoridades gives the noun the senses “evil”, “harm, injury” and “illness”.[15]

The Academy's dictionary of 1884 has two articles, as the DLE still does: one for the shortened adjective with the noun senses, and one for the adverb “Del lat. male”.[16][17][18] Many diseases are named with the noun, such as mal de ojo “evil eye” and mal de la tierra “homesickness”.[18] In Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay and Uruguay mal also means a curse or harm done by witchcraft.[19]

Timeline

  • c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses it as a noun and as an adverb.[12][2][3]
  • c. 1180 – the Auto de los Reyes Magos: Dios te curie de mal.[12]
  • 1208 – mal tomada “wrongly taken” in the Cortes of León.[12]
  • c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin malum for the noun.[13]
  • 1528 – the first record from the Americas, in Nicaragua.[20]
  • 1611 – Covarrubias: the opposite of good, Latin malum.[14]
  • 1884 – the Academy separates the adjective and noun from the adverb.[16][17]

Meanings

Adverb

  1. badly, wrongly, not as it should be: Lo has escrito mal.[4][1]
  2. Not as wished or needed, unfortunately: El viaje salió mal.[4]
  3. With difficulty, hardly: Mal puede ayudarte quien no sabe nada.[4]
  4. Little, poorly: Dormí mal.[4][1]
  5. In poor health, ill: Hoy estoy mal.[4]

Noun

  1. evil, the opposite of good.[10][1]
  2. harm or injury done to someone or their property.[10][1]
  3. Misfortune, calamity.[10]
  4. Illness, ailment.[10]

Word family

  • malparido
  • malamente
  • maleza
  • malicia
  • malo
  • maldad
  • maligno
  • Latin male
  • Portuguese mal

Usage notes

Mal is also the shortened form of the adjective malo before a masculine singular noun (un mal momento): the DLE treats it as a separate headword, mal¹, of different origin from the adverb.[10][21] Its comparative is peor.[1] Set phrases include de mal en peor “from bad to worse”, mal que bien “one way or another” and menos mal “just as well”.[4][1] The colloquial manque “although” comes from mal que.[6]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 784
  3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. malo
  4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. mal2
  5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5257
  6. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4050
  7. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
  8. ^ 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
  9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2101
  10. ^ 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. mal1
  11. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  12. ^ 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. mal
  13. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 375
  14. ^ 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
  15. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. mal
  16. ^ 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. 664
  17. ^ 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. 665
  18. ^ a b 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. mal
  19. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. mal
  20. ^ 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. mal
  21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mal

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Mal.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/mal. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

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