notificar

Forms

notificar (first-person singular present notifico, first-person singular preterite notifiqué, past participle notificado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin nōtificō (“to make known”).^[2][1][3] Corominas lists it as a learned word in the family of conocer, as a compound of the rare noto “known”, and dates it to Nebrija.^[4]

This verb is formed from Latin nōtus (“known”) + -ficō, from the stem of faciō (“to make”).^[5][1][6] Its first part is the past participle of nōscō (“to get to know”).^[7] It is rare and early in classical Latin, found in Pomponius, and became a legal word: Bénaben calls it a word of legal Latin, and the DHLF says that French notifier (1314) was borrowed from the Latin of the jurists.^[5][8][6][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first hit is the Libro de los doce sabios (c. 1237), in a copy of the late 14th or early 15th century: lo cual las estorias maravillosamente notifican “which the histories wonderfully make known”.^[9][10] The first record in a text without a later copy is the Spanish translation of Jacques de Vitry's history of Jerusalem (after 1350), where an angel announces to Zechariah que su oraçion era oida “that his prayer was heard”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

In the 14th and 15th centuries it meant generally “to make known, tell”: Juan Fernández de Heredia uses it in his translations, and DICCA-XV, for the Crown of Aragon, records it from 1414.^[9][11][3] Nebrija (c. 1495) translates it with Latin certiorem facio “I inform”.^[12][13]

From the 16th century the legal sense is common in the documents of the Americas, of notifying a sentence to a party (Nicaragua 1529, Panama 1550).^[14] Autoridades (1734) put this legal sense first and gave the general one as an extension, quoting the Marquis of Santillana and Fray Luis de León; the Academy kept this order in 1884 and 1899.^[15][16][17] The DLE now puts the general sense first and adds a third, with the person as object: to make someone the recipient of a notification.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1237 – the Libro de los doce sabios, in a copy of about 1400.^[9][10]
• after 1350 – the translation of Jacques de Vitry's history of Jerusalem.^[9]
• 1376–1396 – Juan Fernández de Heredia uses it in several translations.^[9]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija enters it, with Latin notifico.^[12][3]
• 1529 – first record from the Americas, in Nicaragua, in the spelling notefiqué.^[14]
• 1734 – Autoridades gives the legal sense first.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from notus and facere.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. To notify, make something known with a definite purpose: Nos notificaron el cambio de horario por correo.^[2][1]
2. (law) To communicate an administrative or judicial decision formally to the person concerned.^[2][18]
3. To make someone the recipient of a notificación: La empresa fue notificada de la multa.^[2]

Word family

• notificación

Related words

• noticia
• notorio
• noto
• French notifier

Usage notes

The verb is spelt with ⟨qu⟩ before e (notifiqué).^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. notificar
3. ^ 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. notificar
4. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 176
5. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. notificar
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
10. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. notificar
11. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
12. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 387
13. ^ 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
14. ^ 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
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 682
16. ^ 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. 743
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 697
18. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. notificar