mitad

Forms

mitad f (plural mitades)^[1] In the 13th century meetad, meatad and metad prevail in León, meatad in Castile and mitad in Aragon.^[2] Old Spanish also had meedade, meadade and meitad;^[3] metad and meti survive in popular and regional speech.^[4][5] Autoridades notes in 1734 that some provinces said metad.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish meitad, inherited from Late Latin medietās (“middle; half”).^[2][6][5][1] Corominas explains the kept ⟨t⟩ as a semi-learned treatment, because the word was used so often in notarial deeds.^[2][7]

The same Latin word is Portuguese metade, Galician metade, Asturian metá, Catalan meitat, Occitan meitat, French moitié and Italian metà.^[8][1][2][9]

Medietās is mostly a Late Latin word, formed from Latin medius (“middle”) + -tās.^[1][10] Cicero used it to render Ancient Greek μεσότης (mesótēs) “mean”, and apologised for it.^[11] medius comes from Proto-Italic *meðjos, from Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos; Ancient Greek μέσος (mésos) and Sanskrit मध्य (mádhya) are cognates.^[1][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has the form meatad: a los peones la meatad sin falla “and to the foot soldiers half, without fail”.^[13][2][6] The form mitad is first found in 1213.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose already has both senses, “half” and “the middle point”.^[14] Nebrija about 1495 still wrote meitad.^[7] The Academy's dictionary of 1817 records mitad y mitad “in equal parts” and engañarse en la mitad del justo precio “to be badly deceived”.^[15]

Domínguez in 1846 recorded cara mitad for a spouse and noted that the Academy lacked it; the Academy's dictionary has it from 1884.^[16][17] Baralt in 1855 condemned mitad mujer, mitad pez as a Gallicism, preferring medio.^[18] The DLE now gives this use as an adverb.^[5] In the old money of Chile mitad was a coin of a centavo and a half.^[19]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – meatad in the Cantar de mio Cid (in a 14th-century copy).^[13][2]
• c. 1200 – meetad in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar.^[13]
• 1213 – first record of the form mitad.^[2][6]
• 1250–1279 – meatad in Alfonso X's Lapidario.^[14]
• 1509 – first record from the Americas, as meytad, in Santo Domingo;^[20] mitad follows there in 1515.^[20]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades has mitad and notes the regional metad.^[3]
• 1817 – the Academy records mitad y mitad.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy records cara mitad.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. half: each of the two equal parts into which a whole is divided: Le dio la mitad del pan.^[5][1]
2. The middle: the part of something at the same distance from its ends: Se detuvo en mitad del puente.^[5]

Adverb

1. Half, in about equal measure: mitad en broma, mitad en serio.^[5]

Related words

• medio
• Latin medius
• Portuguese metade
• Catalan meitat

Usage notes

Cara mitad is a colloquial term for one's spouse.^[5][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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. 4, 11
3. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 579
4. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4243
5. ^ 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. mitad
6. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. medio
7. ^ 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. mitad
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. medietas
9. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. metá
10. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. mitad
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. mitad
14. ^ a b 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. mitad
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 577
16. ^ a b Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 2, 1206
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. 708
18. ^ Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 444
19. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1148
20. ^ 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. meitad