ochenta

Forms

ochenta (invariable)^[2] Old Spanish texts write ochaenta as often as ochenta, beside otaenta, octaenta and oytanta.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish ochaenta, inherited from Latin octāgintā (“eighty”), a variant of octōgintā.^[1][5][6] García de Diego starts from a form octuaginta, shaped by septuāgintā (“seventy”).^[7]

The same Latin numeral is Portuguese oitenta, Galician oitenta, Catalan vuitanta, Italian ottanta and French huitante, the last still used in Switzerland.^[7][8][9]

The Latin numeral is formed from octō (“eight”) and a noun derived from the word for “ten”, meaning “a ten”.^[10][9] Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Indo-European *oktōḱomt, from an earlier “eight-ten”, and compares Ancient Greek ὀγδοήκοντα (ogdoḗkonta).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates ochenta to 1219.^[5] The CDH's earliest hit is a charter of 1247 from the monastery of Oña, dated en el era de mill dozientos et otaenta et cinco annos “in the era one thousand two hundred and eighty-five”.^[4] Most early records are such dates, as in the Moamín of 1250 and the Fuero Juzgo.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija rendered it with numerus octogenarius.^[11] Autoridades defined it as the number that results from multiplying ten by eight.^[12] The Academy's 1884 edition gave the etymology from Latin octoginta and added the ordinal use, as in año ochenta, and the noun for the figure.^[13] A Mexican text of 1960 recalls ser bueno hasta el ochenta as a recent expression for “to be of the highest quality”, and the plural los ochentas names the decade.^[14]

Timeline

• 1219 – first record, according to Corominas.^[5]
• 1247 – the form otaenta in a charter of Oña.^[4]
• c. 1250–1260 – the Fuero Juzgo has ochenta.^[4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives numerus octogenarius.^[11]
• 1611 – first record in the Americas, in Guatemala City.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades defines it as ten times eight.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the ordinal use and the etymology.^[13]
• 1986 – los ochentas for the decade in a Mexican text.^[14]

Meanings

Numeral

1. eighty; eight times ten, also used as a pronoun: Mi abuela ya tiene ochenta años.^[2][1]
2. eightieth, used after a noun: la fila ochenta.^[2]

Noun

1. The number eighty, the natural number after seventy-nine.^[2]
2. The figure or figures that write the number eighty.^[2]

Word family

• ochentón
• ochentavo

Related words

• ocho
• octogésimo
• octogenario
• Latin octōgintā

References

1. ^ a b c d 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. ochenta
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock
4. ^ 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. ochenta
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ocho
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
7. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
8. ^ 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. 503
9. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. octante
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 388
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 15
13. ^ 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. 753
14. ^ a b c Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies