opinar

Forms

opinar (first-person singular present opino, first-person singular preterite opiné, past participle opinado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin opīnor (“to think, believe, suppose”), a deponent verb.^[2][3][1][4] Early Latin also had an active opīnō, in Plautus and Ennius, and the Academy's 1884 edition gives that active infinitive as the source.^[5][6] Corominas treats the verb under opinión.^[3]

The Latin verb is formed on an adjective seen in inopīnus (“unexpected”), whose origin is unclear.^[1] It is traditionally connected with optō (“to choose, wish”) and Proto-Indo-European *op- (“to choose”), as Gómez de Silva does, but Schrijver finds the link between “choose” and “believe” weak.^[7][1][8] Vine points out that a Praenestine inscription spells it opeinor, with a diphthong that makes the analysis harder.^[7][1]

The same learned verb is Portuguese opinar, Catalan opinar, French opiner and Italian opinare.^[1] In Portuguese it is recorded from the 17th century.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest CDH hit is the participle in Juan Fernández de Heredia's translation of Eutropius (1377–1399): espauorido por sobtosa et no opinada sobreuienta, “terrified by a sudden and unexpected attack”.^[10] Enrique de Villena's Arte cisoria (1423) uses the gerund opinando, “supposing”.^[10] Corominas dates the verb to 1495, Nebrija's Vocabulario, and DICCA-XV to 1417.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija's Latin dictionary of 1492 glosses opinor as “to think with opinion”, and his Spanish–Latin Vocabulario has opinar for it.^[4] In the 15th century Hernando del Pulgar also used it for “to deem”: Muchos de los que opinamos de noble sangre veemos pobres, “many of those whom we deem of noble blood we see poor”.^[10] The Diccionario de Autoridades made it intransitive, “to reason or judge with probability about a matter”.^[11] A Guatemalan text of 1716 has the passive fue generalmente opinado que …, “it was generally thought that …”.^[12] The DLE now gives transitive and intransitive senses, to hold and to express an opinion.^[2] Moliner notes that a speaker gives an opinion with this very verb in the first person: opino que ….^[13]

Timeline

• 1377–1399 – first record in the CDH, the participle opinada in Fernández de Heredia.^[10]
• 1417 – first record in DICCA-XV.^[4]
• 1423 – Enrique de Villena uses opinando.^[10]
• 1438 – first record of inopinado.^[3]
• 1495 – the date Corominas gives, in Nebrija's Vocabulario.^[3][14]
• 1716 – first record from the Americas, in Guatemala.^[12]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as an intransitive verb.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy defines it as forming a judgement about a doubtful matter.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To think, to be of the opinion: Opino que deberíamos esperar.^[2][1][13]
2. (transitive) To express an opinion, to opine.^[2][1]
3. (intransitive) To have an opinion of someone or something: ¿Qué opinas de la película?^[2]
4. (intransitive) To give one's opinion: Nadie quiso opinar en la reunión.^[2][13]

Related words

• opinador
• opinante
• opinión
• opinable
• inopinado
• Latin opīnor

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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. opinar
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. opinión
4. ^ a b c d 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. opinar
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ 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. 761
7. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. opinar
9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2400
10. ^ 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. opinar
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 42
12. ^ 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. opinar
13. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. opinar
14. ^ 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