pausa

Forms

pausa f (plural pausas)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin pausa (“pause, stop, cessation”), a learned word.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin noun and the Late Latin verb pausāre “to stop, rest” were taken from Greek: the DLE derives the noun from Ancient Greek παῦσαι (paûsai), the aorist infinitive of παύω (paúō, “to stop, make cease”), and Corominas leaves open whether the Latin forms came from the verb or from the noun παῦσις (paûsis, “a stopping”).^[4][2] Lewis & Short, the OLD and Wiktionary compare the noun with the Greek noun.^[5][6][1] The DHLF notes that the Greek noun is rare and late and that the change of declension is hard to explain, and asks whether the Latin noun was remade from the verb.^[7]

The inherited outcome of the same Latin family is the verb posar “to rest, lodge”, recorded from 1129, with its derivatives posada and reposar.^[2][3] Corominas thinks the rare noun posa is a back-formation from that verb rather than a survival of the Latin noun.^[2][3] The learned word is also Catalan pausa, French pause, first recorded in 1390, and Portuguese pausa.^[8][7][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest CDH hits are the name of the Roman consul Pansa, written Pausa, in Alfonso X and in Fernández de Heredia.^[10] The first record of the word itself is in Fernández de Heredia's Aragonese De secreto secretorum (1376–96, in a manuscript of 1385–93): et duerma buena pausa “and let him sleep a good rest”, in the sense “rest, repose”.^[10] Corominas finds the learned word in Enrique de Villena, and his Breve diccionario dates it 1433.^[2][3][11]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary of 1492 already used it for a pause or silence, and his Spanish–Latin one gave posa as a synonym.^[11] Covarrubias explained the word from Latin and Greek, said that the musical rests of plainchant were named from it, and gave its everyday sense as “quiet, calm”, with pausado for someone who speaks very slowly.^[12] Autoridades called it a purely Latin word and gave three senses: an interruption of movement or work, quiet and rest, and slowness in acting.^[13] The Academy's 1817 dictionary had the two musical senses, the rest and its written sign, and the phrase a pausas “at intervals”.^[14] The linguistic sense, a break in speech that marks off a group of sounds, is in the 2001 edition.^[15]

In Bolivia pausa is a firework that drops showers of coloured sparks, at intervals as Bayo explains.^[16][17][18]

Timeline

• 1376–1396 – Fernández de Heredia's De secreto secretorum uses pausa for “rest”.^[10]
• 1433 – the date of first record in Corominas's Breve diccionario.^[3]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary glosses Latin pausa as “pause or silence”.^[11]
• 1566 – the first record from the Americas, in Yucatán: hizo pausa y dijo.^[19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias links the word with the rests of music.^[12]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary has the musical senses and a pausas.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin pausa.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. A pause, a brief interruption of a movement, action or activity: Hicimos una pausa para tomar café.^[4][1]
2. Slowness, calm in doing something: Contestó con mucha pausa.^[4][21]
3. (linguistics) A break in phonation, of varying length, that marks off units of intonation or discourse.^[4]
4. (music) A brief interval in which singing or playing stops, a rest.^[4]
5. (music) The sign for a rest in written music.^[4]
6. (Bolivia) A rocket (cohete) that drops a shower of coloured sparks when it bursts.^[18][16]

Word family

• pausado
• pausar

Related words

• posar
• reposar
• posada
• menopausia
• Latin pausa
• French pause

Usage notes

The phrase a pausas means “at intervals, with interruptions”.^[4][22]

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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, 617
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. posar
4. ^ 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. pausa
5. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. pausa
9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2503
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. pausa
11. ^ 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. pausa
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. 1199
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 168
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 649
15. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. pausa
16. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 632
17. ^ Bayo, Ciro (1910), Vocabulario criollo-español sud-americano, Madrid: Hernando, p. 170
18. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. pausa
19. ^ 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. pausa
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 801
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pausa
22. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 583