mejor

Forms

mejor m or f (masculine and feminine plural mejores)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote meior, meyor, mellor, millor, mijor and miyor;^[2][3][4] García de Diego explains the forms with i in the Cid by the influence of peyor “worse”.^[2][3][4] Asturian has meyor and miyor, Aragonese and Navarrese millor;^[4][5] Judaeo-Spanish has mijor.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin melior (“better”), the comparative used with bonus (“good”), continuing the Latin accusative.^{[6][7][8][1][9]} The same word is Portuguese melhor, Galician mellor, Catalan millor, Occitan melhor, French meilleur and Italian migliore;^[10][1] Corominas calls it common to all the Romance languages of the West.^[6][10][1] French meilleur likewise comes from the accusative, which ousted the old nominative mieldre.^[11]

Wiktionary derives melior from Proto-Indo-European *mélyōs, from *mel- (“strong, big”), and the OLD and the DHLF connect it with multus (“much”), so that the first sense would have been “bigger, stronger”.^[1][12][11] De Vaan calls the etymology weak: Ancient Greek μάλα (mála, “very”) and μᾶλλον (mâllon, “more”) show no e-grade, and he mentions as an alternative a link with μέλω (mélō, “to be a concern”) and Hittite māl (“mind”).^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy), where it is an adverb: Doña Jimena prays „cuanto ella mejor sabe” “as best she knows how”.^[14][6] The Auto de los Reyes Magos (c. 1180) has the adjective: „los meiores que nos auemos” “the best that we have”.^[14]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's Lapidario (1250–1279) uses the word both as the comparative of bueno and as the comparative of bien.^[15] Covarrubias (1611) called it the irregular comparative of Latin bonus.^[16] Autoridades gave the adjective “superior to another thing in some natural or moral quality”, the adverb “more rightly, more justly”, and the phrase mejor te ayude Dios, used to reply that what someone has said is false or ill-meant.^[17]

The Academy's dictionary of 1843 adds mejor que mejor “so much the better”.^[18] In 1869 a lo mejor was a familiar phrase announcing an unexpected and usually unwelcome event; today it means “perhaps”, and Mexico also says a la mejor.^[19][8][20] The edition of 1884 adds the adverb of preference, illustrated by „mejor quiero pedir limosna que cometer una villanía” “I would rather beg than do a base deed”.^[21] The pleonastic más mejor is popular in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the Southern Cone, and Alcalá Venceslada recorded it in Andalusia.^[20][22]

Timeline

• 1107 – the BDELC's date for the verb mejorar, which the DCECH finds in the Cid.^[7][6]
• c. 1140 – first record, as an adverb, in the Cantar de mio Cid (14th-century copy).^[14][7]
• c. 1180 – the plural adjective meiores in the Auto de los Reyes Magos.^[14]
• c. 1194–1211 – the form mellor in the Liber regum.^[14]
• 1220–1250 – first records of mejoría and medrar.^[7]
• 1370 – first record of mejora.^[7]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin melior and melius.^[23]
• 1515 – the first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[24]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary records mejor que mejor.^[18]
• 1869 – the Academy's dictionary records a lo mejor.^[19]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology, “Del lat. melior”.^[21]

Meanings

Adjective

1. better: superior to something else in some quality; the comparative of bueno: Este vino es mejor que el de ayer.^[8][1]
2. (with the definite article) best: Es la mejor alumna de su curso.^[1][25]
3. Preferable, more advisable: Es mejor que salgas temprano.^[8][1]

Adverb

1. Better; the comparative of bien: Hoy me encuentro mejor.^[8][1]
2. Rather, preferably: Mejor nos quedamos en casa.^[8]

Word family

• mejorar
• mejoría
• desmejorar
• medrar
• mejora
• inmejorable

Related words

• Latin melior
• Portuguese melhor
• English ameliorate

Usage notes

A lo mejor “perhaps” is colloquial;^[20] Mexico also has a la mejor.^[8][20] Más mejor is popular in Spain and the Americas but not standard.^[20][22]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. mejor
3. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. 294
4. ^ a b c d García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4256
5. ^ a b Nehama, Joseph (1977), Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol, Madrid: CSIC, p. s.v. mijor
6. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 11
7. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mejor
8. ^ 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. mejor
9. ^ 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. mejor
10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. melior
11. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
12. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
14. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. mejor
15. ^ 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. mejor
16. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1126
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 531
18. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 469
19. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 500
20. ^ a b c d e Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. mejor
21. ^ 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. 691
22. ^ a b Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 396
23. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 379
24. ^ 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. mejor
25. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. mejor