pacificar

Forms

pacificar (first-person singular present pacifico, first-person singular preterite pacifiqué, past participle pacificado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin pacifico (“to make peace; to pacify”).^[2][3][4] Corominas counts it among the learned words of the family of paz; the popular outcome of Vulgar Latin *adpacificare is apaciguar, recorded from the end of the 13th century, with the older Old Spanish apazguar.^[2][3][5] García de Diego likewise contrasts the learned verb with the popular one and with Catalan apaivagar.^[6][7]

The Latin verb is formed from pax (“peace”) and -fico, the combining form of facio (“to make”).^[8][1][9] Classical Latin used it first intransitively, “to negotiate peace”.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

DEMel's first record is se paçifiquen in the Castilian translation of Seneca's De ira (1284–1295).^[10] The Old Spanish Textual Archive has it in several texts of 1376, and DICCA-XV cites a CORDE date of 1376–1391.^[11][12] Corominas's first records are in Santillana and Alonso de Palencia (1490).^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija gave three Latin equivalents: one for pacificar la tierra por armas, to subdue a land, one for appeasing an angry man, and one for simply making peace.^[12] In the conquest of the Americas the verb became a euphemism for subduing indigenous peoples, as Corominas notes after Friederici: in 1539 a chronicler of New Granada wrote that what the conquerors called pacificar was laying waste the land and killing its people.^[2][13] Autoridades recorded the sense of calming things such as the winds or the sea, and an intransitive use, to seek peace.^[14]

Timeline

• 1284–1295 – se paçifiquen in the Castilian Seneca.^[10]
• 1376 – in several texts of the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[11]
• 1490 – Alonso de Palencia uses it often; this is Corominas's date.^[2][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin paco, placo and pacifico as its equivalents.^[12]
• 1525 – the first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme, of Indians who will not be pacified.^[13]
• 1611 – Covarrubias links it with the beatitude Beati pacifici.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. To pacify: to establish peace where there was war or discord.^[4][1]
2. To reconcile people who are opposed or at odds; also reflexive.^[4]
3. (intransitive) To seek peace, by asking for it or wishing it.^[4][14]
4. (reflexive) Of something stirred up: to calm down: Por la tarde se pacificó el mar.^[4]

Word family

• pacificación
• pacificador

Related words

• paz
• pacífico
• apaciguar
• Latin pacifico

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 444
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. paz
4. ^ 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. pacificar
5. ^ 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. 551
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4731
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6136
8. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. pācificō
9. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
10. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. pacificar
11. ^ a b 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, p. s.v. pacificar
12. ^ 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. pacificar
13. ^ 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. pacificar
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 71
15. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1182