mansión

Forms

mansión f (plural mansiones)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin mansiō (“a staying; lodging, stopping place”), taken over by the learned route.^[2][3][4] Wiktionary instead treats it as inherited, from the Latin accusative.^[1] The popular descendant of the same Latin word is mesón “inn”, recorded from 1349 (as Old Spanish maisón in 1173); Corominas leaves open whether it continues the Latin word directly or was taken from French maison (“house”).^[2][5] In the DCECH he argues that the inn word is largely a Gallo-Romance word, but that the sense “roadside inn” probably continues the night stage of the Roman post roads, matching Old Galician-Portuguese meijão (“house”).^[5] From that word in the sense “house” comes mesnada, first a lord's armed household, recorded in an Aragonese document of about 1090.^[5]

The Latin noun is formed from maneō (“to remain, stay”) with the suffix -tiō, and first meant the fact of staying somewhere.^[6][1] Under the Empire it named a halt or stage on a journey, and later a house; in that sense it lived on in northern Gallo-Romance, where it competed with casa, the word that Spanish, Portuguese and Italian kept.^[7][8] Gómez de Silva traces the verb to an Indo-European root Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to remain”), and names permanecer, permanente and remanso as Spanish words of the same family.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest Spanish record is in Alfonso X's Lapidario (c. 1250, in a manuscript of the mid-13th century), where the word is an astrological term: quando entrare el sol en el primero grado de la mansion que es dicha çarfa “when the sun enters the first degree of the mansion called çarfa”.^[10][11] The Alfonsine texts use it for the twenty-eight “mansions” or houses of the moon.^[11][10]

Semantic evolution

In Alfonso X's astronomy mansión was a technical word, a house of the sky through which the sun or moon passes; the General Estoria glosses las mansiones o las posadas de la Luna.^[10][11] In the 15th century it came into general literary use with the Latin sense “stay, stopping place”: the DCECH and the BDELC date it about 1440, in Alfonso de la Torre, Juan de Mena and Santillana, and the CDH has la terçera mansyón, a stage of a journey, in de la Torre's Visión deleitable.^[5][2][10] Nebrija's Latin dictionary of 1492 glosses Latin mansio as estança.^[4]

The Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as a stop or halt made somewhere, quoting Solís (donde se hizo mansión), and also as a room of a house in which one lives and rests.^[12] The Academy's 1884 edition gives the etymology from Latin mansio, the senses “stay” and “dwelling” and the phrase hacer mansión “to stop somewhere”.^[13] The modern sense “sumptuous house” is the third in the DLE.^[3] Moliner notes that the word is now used only of palaces and luxurious houses, and records mansión de los bienaventurados for heaven.^[3][14] In the Americas the word is recorded from 1625, and hacer mansión from 1718 in Nueva Vizcaya.^[15]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses mansión for an astrological house.^[10][11]
• 1256 – the Picatrix translation speaks of the twenty-eight mansiones of the moon.^[10]
• c. 1430–1440 – Alfonso de la Torre's Visión deleitable uses it for a stage of a journey; the DCECH and the BDELC date the word about 1440.^[10][5][2]
• 1492 – Nebrija glosses Latin mansio as estança.^[4]
• 1718 – haser mansión “to halt” in a document from Nueva Vizcaya, Mexico.^[15]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as a halt and as a room for living in.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin mansio.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A stay or halt in a place.^[3][14]
2. A dwelling, abode.^[3]
3. A mansion, a large and luxurious house: Compraron una mansión con jardín en las afueras.^[3][14][1]

Related words

• mesón
• mesnada
• permanecer
• remanso
• Latin mansiō
• French maison

Usage notes

The phrase hacer mansión means “to stop or stay somewhere”.^[3][13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mesón
3. ^ 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. mansión
4. ^ a b c 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. mansión
5. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 812
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. mansiō
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. maison
8. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. mansio
9. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. mansión
10. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. mansión
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. mansión
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, s.v. mansión
13. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 675
14. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mansión
15. ^ 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. mansión