nación

Forms

nación f (plural naciones)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin nātiō (“birth; breed, race; people, nation”), a learned word.^[2][3][1][4] Corominas gives its first record as 1444, and Vox dates the borrowing to the 15th century, but the CDH has it in texts of the mid-13th century.^[3][4][5] The Latin noun is formed from nāscor (“to be born”) with the suffix -tiō, from *gnātiō; it meant “birth”, then “breed, stock” and “people, tribe”, and in Christian Latin its plural meant the gentiles, the pagan peoples.^{[6][1][7][8][9]}

The same Latin word is Portuguese nação and French nation, which French had borrowed by about 1120.^[10][8] Nascentes calls the Portuguese word semi-learned.^[11] Asturian nación and Galician nación are taken from Spanish.^[1] The inherited verb of the same Latin family is nacer.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest records are in legal texts of about 1250: the Aragonese Vidal Mayor speaks of the order that reciben las nationes de los omnes que deiús el cielo son, “the nations of men who are under heaven receive”, and the Fuero Juzgo (c. 1250–1260) of the Church, which holds omnes de muchas naciones, “men of many nations”, under one faith.^[5] A Castilian Bible translation of the same years has los tiempos de las naciones, “the times of the gentiles”, the biblical sense of the Latin plural.^[5][7]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose uses it for the peoples of a land and for race or lineage.^[12] A 15th-century sense “birth” appears in the Cancionero de Baena: donsellas de alta nascion, “maidens of high birth”.^[13] Autoridades kept that sense only in de nación “by birth”, as in ciego de nación “blind from birth”, defined the main sense as the inhabitants of a province, country or kingdom, and recorded a low-style use for any foreigner.^[14] The Academy's 1884 edition defined it as a state or political body with a common supreme government, and the 1899 edition as the inhabitants of a country ruled by one government, the definition still used today.^[15][16][2] The sense of a people of common origin, language and tradition is a later addition to the Academy's dictionary.^[2][17]

In the Americas the word was used from the 16th century for indigenous peoples: in 1548 a chronicle of New Granada mentions una nación de indios que se llaman Coromochos.^[18] In New Mexican Spanish it means an Indian tribe.^[19] The sense “foreigner”, masculine, survives in Bolivia and Argentina, and in Buenos Aires slang it meant an Italian.^[20][17][21] In the north of Spain it is a farming word for the womb or vulva of a cow and for a calf.^[22][23][24]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – the Vidal Mayor has nationes “nations”.^[5]
• c. 1250–1260 – the Fuero Juzgo speaks of men of many naciones.^[5]
• 1272–1275 – the General Estoria has the peoples de todas nationes.^[12]
• 1444 – Corominas's first record.^[3][9]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: nacion de gentes, Latin natio.^[25]
• 1532 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico.^[18]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records de nación “by birth” and the sense “foreigner”.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy defines a nation as a state with a common supreme government.^[15]
• 1899 – the Academy's definition becomes the inhabitants of a country ruled by one government.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. nation: the inhabitants of a country ruled by one government: La nación entera votó ese día.^[2][1]
2. The territory of such a country.^[2]
3. A people of common origin, who usually speak one language and share a tradition.^[2][20]
4. (colloquial, rare) birth: de nación “by birth”.^[2][14]
5. (masculine, Argentina, Bolivia, dated) A foreigner.^[17][20]

Word family

• nacional
• nacionalidad
• nacionalismo
• nacionalista
• nacionalizar
• internacional

Related words

• nacer
• nativo
• natal
• Latin natio
• French nation

Usage notes

De nación is used to say where someone comes from or was born.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. nación
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. nacer
4. ^ a b c Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. nación
5. ^ 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. nación
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 474
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2316
11. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. nação
12. ^ 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. nación
13. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. s.v. nación
14. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. nación
15. ^ 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. 731
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 686
17. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. nación
18. ^ 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. nación
19. ^ Cobos, Rubén (1983), A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, p. 137
20. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. nación
21. ^ Bayo, Ciro (1910), Vocabulario criollo-español sud-americano, Madrid: Hernando, p. 151
22. ^ García-Lomas, G. Adriano (1922), Estudio del dialecto popular montañés: fonética, etimologías y glosario de voces, San Sebastián: Nueva Editorial, p. 251
23. ^ Rato y Hevia, Apolinar de (1891), Vocabulario de las palabras y frases bables que se hablaron antiguamente y de las que hoy se hablan en el Principado de Asturias, Madrid: Manuel G. Hernández, p. 86
24. ^ Le Men Loyer, Janick (2002–2012), Léxico del leonés actual, 4 vols., León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro; electronic version, Universidad de León, p. s.v. nación
25. ^ 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. nación