nuncio

Forms

nuncio m (plural nuncios)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin nūntius (“messenger; message”), a learned word.^[2][3][1] Bénaben adds that its special sense, the diplomatic agent of the Holy See, came through Italian nunzio.^[4] The same Latin word is French nonce and Portuguese núncio.^[5][6]

The Latin word served both as an adjective, “announcing”, and as a noun for the messenger and the message.^[7][8] Latin grammarians record an older spelling nountius.^[7] De Vaan reconstructs *nountio- but calls its further origin unclear: some derive it from a root *neuH- (“to cry”), seen in नवते (návate).^[7] Others connect it with novus (“new”), but de Vaan objects that the form this requires, *no(wo)wentio-, makes no sense morphologically.^[7] Wiktionary says that de Vaan tentatively favours the root meaning “to cry”, and lists further proposals.^[1]

From the verb nūntiō (“to announce”) and its compounds Spanish has the learned verbs anunciar (1240), denunciar (1251), pronunciar and renunciar (both 1220–1250) and enunciar (1732).^[2][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest clear record of the noun is in Juan Fernández de Heredia's Historia troyana (1376–1396), where a character mando al dicho nuncio que la pregasse humilment “ordered the said messenger to beg her humbly”.^[10] In this first sense it was any messenger sent by one person to another, and the Aragonese texts of the following decades use it for the agents and envoys of a town or a monastery, beside procuradores and andadores.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The figurative sense, a thing that announces another, is found early: Enrique de Villena's glosses on the Aeneid (1427–1428) list among the virtues one that is nunçio de continençia “herald of continence”.^[10] The papal envoy is in a letter of 1529 from Mexico and Toledo, vino el nunçio del papa “the pope's nuncio came”.^[11] The Diccionario de Autoridades gave the messenger first and the pope's ambassador to the Catholic princes as the sense “by antonomasia”, and recorded that in Toledo the hospital for the insane was called el Nuncio, because a nuncio had founded it.^[12] Cejador identifies the founder as Francisco Ortiz, canon of Toledo and apostolic nuncio, and dates the foundation to 1483.^[13]

Domínguez added the deputies sent to the Polish diet.^[14] The Academy entered the figurative sense in 1869, with the example of the south wind that announces rain in Madrid, and in its 1884 edition gave the etymology.^[15][16] In Aragon the word also named the town crier and an officer of the church court.^[17] The English word nuncio is from Italian, not from Spanish.^[18]

Timeline

• 1376–1396 – Heredia's Historia troyana uses nuncio for a messenger.^[10]
• 1391 – an ordinance for Zaragoza names nuncios et andadores of the city's officers.^[10]
• 1415 – first record in the DICCA-XV corpus.^[19]
• 1427–1428 – Villena uses it figuratively, “herald”.^[10]
• 1499 – the date of first record in the BDELC.^[2]
• 1529 – first record from the Americas, for the papal nuncio.^[11]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the messenger, the papal ambassador and the hospital of Toledo.^[12]
• 1869 – the Academy adds the sense “sign, announcement”.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the Latin etymology.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. (literary) A messenger who carries news, a message or an errand from one person to another.^[3][20][1]
2. (Catholicism) A nuncio: the pope's diplomatic representative, who also exercises some papal powers as a legate (legado); also nuncio apostólico: El nuncio presentó sus cartas credenciales al rey.^[3][21][1]
3. (literary) A sign or herald of something to come: Aquellas nubes eran nuncio de tormenta.^[3][20]

Related words

• anunciar
• anuncio
• denunciar
• enunciar
• pronunciar
• renunciar
• Latin nūntius
• Italian nunzio

Usage notes

Several early hits of the CDH are other words: in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200) nuncio is the verb form “announced”, and in the fueros and charters of León and Castile it is a due paid to the lord: the Fuero antiguo de Castilla (before 1356) explains that one of the best head of cattle is taken, á esto dicen nuncio “and this they call nuncio”.^[10] The DEMel records this charter word from 1093, also spelt nunçio, nuzo and nupcio.^[22]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. nuncio
3. ^ a b c d 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. nuncio
4. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. nuncio
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. nuntius
6. ^ 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. 498
7. ^ a b c d de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 495
10. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. nuncio
11. ^ 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. nuncio
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 694
13. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 796
14. ^ 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, 1266
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 543
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. 746
17. ^ Borao, Jerónimo (1908), Diccionario de voces aragonesas, 2nd ed., Zaragoza: Imprenta del Hospicio Provincial, p. 18
18. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
19. ^ 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. nuncio
20. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. nuncio
21. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. nuncio
22. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. nuncio