palacio

Forms

palacio m (plural palacios)^[1] Old Spanish wrote it palacio, palaçio, palazio and the Latinising palatio.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish palacio, borrowed from Latin palātium (“the Palatine Hill; palace”), originally the name of the Palatine Hill in Rome, then of the Caesars' palace on it, and then of any palace.^[3][4][5][1] Corominas treats it as a learned or semi-learned word: the /l/ between vowels is kept, and the old spelling with voiceless ⟨c⟩ (in Nebrija and Palencia) points the same way, whereas the other Romance languages have forms that look inherited, though he thinks they too probably owe something to learned influence.^[3] García de Diego also calls it a learned word.^[6]

The same Latin word is Portuguese paço, Galician pazo, Catalan palau, Occitan palatz, French palais and Italian palazzo;^[3][6][7] it was also borrowed as German Pfalz.^[7] Spanish pazo, from Galician, is a doublet of the same word.^[1] The origin of the hill's name is uncertain;^[1][8] Livy connected it with Pallantium, the Arcadian home town of Evander, and an Etruscan origin has also been proposed.^[1][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to a charter of 970 in Oelschläger's list, then to the Cantar de mio Cid.^[3][4] The Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) speaks of the hero's lost property: dexado ha heredades e casas e palacios “he has left estates and houses and palaces”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used the word for a king's residence, for any great house, for the main hall of a house and for the place where the king held public audience; the Partidas, quoted by Autoridades, define the palacio as the place where the king meets openly with his people.^[10][11] The sense “room of a house”, especially a ground-floor room or meeting room, is old (Aragonese inventories of 1379 and 1497), still in Tirso, and survives locally; the DLE gives it for the old kingdom of Toledo and Andalusia.^[3][5] In the 16th century the word also meant “joke, pastime”.^[3]

Covarrubias explained the name from the Palatine Hill, and quoted Isidore's derivation from Pallas, prince of the Arcadians.^[12] The Academy recorded in Murcia a one-room hut with mud walls called palacio, and by 1884 the figurative palacio encantado “a large old house”.^[13][14] Today the word also names monumental public buildings, as in Palacio de Justicia, and without the article it means the royal palace.^[15][16]

Timeline

• 970 – first record, in a charter in Oelschläger's list.^[3][4]
• c. 1140 – casas e palacios in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[9][3]
• 1220–1250 – first record of the derivative palaciano.^[4]
• 1254 – Alfonso X's prose speaks of palacios encortinados “curtained palaces”.^[10]
• 1379 – an Aragonese inventory uses the word for a room of a house.^[3]
• 1521 – first record in the Americas, in Cuba.^[17]
• c. 1540 – first record of palaciego.^[4]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from the Palatine Hill; paladín, from Italian, is first recorded.^[12][4]
• 1817 – the Academy records the Murcian sense “mud-walled hut”.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy first gives the etymology from Latin palatium.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A palace: the residence of a king or queen.^[5][1]
2. A grand house where important people live, or where high bodies meet; a mansion; also a monumental public building: el palacio de los deportes.^[5][1][15]
3. The ancestral house of a noble family.^[5]
4. (Toledo, Andalusia) The main room of a private house.^[5]
5. (obsolete) The place where the king gave public audience.^[5]

Word family

• palaciano
• palaciego
• palacete

Related words

• palatino
• pazo
• Latin palātium
• Portuguese paço

Usage notes

Echar algo a palacio is a colloquial phrase for ignoring something.^[5] Román notes that the DLE lacks the proverb las cosas de palacio van despacio “palace business goes slowly”.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. palacio
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 346
4. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. palacio
5. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. palacio
6. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4743
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6159
8. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 518
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. palacio
10. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. palacio
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 86
12. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1184
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 629
14. ^ 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. 777
15. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. palacio
16. ^ 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. 820
17. ^ 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. palacio
18. ^ Román, Manuel Antonio (1901–1918), Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, 5 vols., Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de San José, p. 108