millón

Forms

millón m (plural millones)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Italian milione (“million”), probably taken directly from Italian, as Wiktionary and Gómez de Silva say.^[1][2] The DLE and Moliner leave the choice open between Italian and French million.^[3][4] Bénaben makes French the intermediary, while Corominas thought that both the Spanish and the Italian word probably came from French, where ⟨million⟩, recorded in 1359, would be a Frenchified pronunciation of a Latin milium abridged from Late Latin milia milium (“thousands of thousands”).^[5][6] The DHLF, however, dates the French form millon to 1266 and derives it from Italian, which had the word before 1350.^[7]

Italian milione is an augmentative of mille (“thousand”) with the suffix -one.^[8] Nocentini derives it from the old plural Old Italian milia instead, and calls it an Italian formation and the source of the French and Spanish words.^[9] The numeral itself goes back to Latin mīlle (“thousand”), like Spanish mil.^[10][1] Old Catalan mília millors (“millions”) was used around 1400, from milia miliorum.^[6] Before the loan, Old Spanish said cuento for “million”, from Latin computus (“reckoning”).^[6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest CDH hit for Millon, in the Cuento muy fermoso de Otas de Roma (1300–1325), is a personal name.^[11] The first record of the word is in Juan Fernández de Heredia's Aragonese translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives (1379–1384): „de las tierras que gano el haujan a reçebir huytanta & cinquo millones” “from the lands he won they were to receive eighty-five millions”, of money.^[11] Corominas's first date is 1448.^[6]

Semantic evolution

In the 15th century the word counted souls, years and soldiers: Vicente Ferrer speaks of mill millones de ánimas, Arragel's Bible translation of quatro millones de años, and Pedro de Corral's chronicle of more than a million crossbowmen.^[11] By then it was already used loosely for a very great number, the sense the Academy labelled figurative in 1884 and the DLE now calls colloquial.^[11][12][3] The older cuento was still used for “million” in accounts from the Americas in 1528.^[13]

In the plural, millones was the name of a tax granted by the kingdoms to the king on the consumption of wine, vinegar, oil, meat, soap and tallow candles, renewed every six years.^[12][3] Today millones also means “a great deal of money”.^[4][14] In Panama, Cuba and Venezuela a millón means “at full speed”.^[15]

Timeline

• 1300–1325 – Millon as a personal name in the Otas de Roma (in a copy of about 1400).^[11]
• 1379–1384 – Fernández de Heredia's translation of Plutarch has millones of money.^[11]
• 1411–1412 – Vicente Ferrer's sermons (in a copy of 1448) speak of mill millones de ánimas.^[11]
• c. 1430 – Pedro de Corral's Crónica del rey don Rodrigo counts más de un millón of crossbowmen.^[11]
• 1448 – Corominas's first record.^[6]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin milies mille as its equivalent.^[16]
• 1532 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico City.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy calls it an augmentative of mil and describes the tax called millones.^[12]
• 1917 – Alemany derives it from Italian milione.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A million: a thousand thousands, 1,000,000: La ciudad pasó del millón de habitantes en 1990.^[3][1]
2. (colloquial) A very large, indefinite number: Ya te he pedido perdón un millón de veces.^[3][14]
3. (in the plural) A great deal of money: Su abuelo ganó millones con el aceite.^[4][14]
4. (in the plural, historical) A tax granted to the king on the consumption of certain goods, renewed every six years.^[3][12]

Word family

• millonada
• millonésimo

Related words

• mil
• millar
• millonario
• billón
• cuento
• Italian milione
• French million

Usage notes

Unlike mil, millón is a noun: it takes un and a plural, and is joined to what it counts by de: tres millones de árboles.^[14][4] The DLE records the phrase la pregunta del millón for the crucial question.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. millón
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. millón
4. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. millón
5. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. millón
6. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mil
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. million
8. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli, p. s.v. milione
9. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. milione
10. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1141
11. ^ a b c d e f g h Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. millón
12. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 704
13. ^ 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. mil
14. ^ a b c d Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. millón
15. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. millón
16. ^ 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. millón
17. ^ 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. millón