pena

Forms

pena f (plural penas)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote penna.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish pena, inherited from Latin poena (“penalty, punishment”), itself a borrowing from Ancient Greek ποινή (poinḗ, “blood money, fine”).^[3][4][5][1] The Latin diphthong /oe/ became /e/, while the learned punir, from pūniō, a derivative of the same noun, shows another treatment of the Greek diphthong.^[3] In the Latin of the Empire the word had widened from “penalty” to “grief, pain”, and Medieval Latin used it for suffering and affliction.^[6][7]

The word is common to all the western Romance languages: Portuguese pena (old pẽa), Galician pena, Catalan pena, Occitan pena, French peine and Italian pena.^[3][8][9][1]

ποινή (poinḗ) goes back to Proto-Indo-European *kʷoynéh₂ (“payment; punishment, vengeance”).^[1] In Homer it is the blood money paid by a killer to the kinsmen of the slain.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Glosas Emilianenses, of about 950, have the plural penas.^[3][4][2] The first hit in the CDH without a later copy, the Cortes of León of 1208, has the legal sense: whoever breaks the peace of the Church caya en la pena de susodita “shall incur the penalty stated above”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In Berceo the word already means affliction and torment, bodily pain and punishment, and a penas “with difficulty”, the source of apenas.^[12][3] Alfonso X's prose has the same four senses: punishment, sorrow, bodily pain and hardship.^[13] Covarrubias (1611) put punishment first, and added that pena sometimes means care and anguish.^[14] Autoridades (1737) has the pains of hell and purgatory, care and sorrow, bodily pain and a women's ornament, a ribbon tied at the neck with a jewel at each end.^[15] The modern dictionary puts the sense “great sadness” first, ahead of the legal penalty.^[5]

In Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Colombia and Venezuela pena means shame or shyness: me da pena “I'm embarrassed”.^[5][16][17] In the Canaries penita is a mild stomach upset.^[18]

Timeline

• c. 950 – the Glosas Emilianenses have penas.^[3][2]
• c. 1200 – the derivative penar in the Disputa del alma y el cuerpo.^[3][4]
• 1208 – the Cortes of León use pena for a legal penalty.^[11]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo has penoso and a penas.^[3][4]
• 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin poena as its equivalent, and has penal.^[19][4]
• 1526 – first record in the Americas, in Cuba: pena de cien azotes “on pain of a hundred lashes”.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias gives the sense “punishment” first.^[14]
• 1737 – Autoridades records the women's ornament called pena.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. Great sorrow or sadness; pity: Me da pena verte tan triste.^[5][1]
2. (law) A penalty or sentence imposed by a court on the person responsible for an offence: la pena de muerte.^[5][1]
3. Bodily pain or torment.^[5]
4. Difficulty, trouble: a duras penas.^[5][1]
5. (historical) A ribbon with a jewel at each end, tied at the neck with the ends hanging over the breast.^[5][15]
6. (historical) A mourning veil fixed to the hat and hanging down the back.^[5]
7. (Central America, Caribbean, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela) Shame, embarrassment.^[5][16][1]
8. (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama) Modesty; shyness.^[5]

Word family

• penal
• penalidad
• penar
• penoso
• penudo
• apenar
• despenar
• apenas

Related words

• penitencia
• penitente
• punir
• impune
• Latin poena
• French peine

Usage notes

Set phrases include valer la pena or merecer la pena “to be worth it”, a duras penas “with great difficulty”, alma en pena “soul in torment” and sin pena ni gloria “without distinction”.^[1] A separate pena of the DLE, from Latin pinna (“feather; fin”), is one of the large flight feathers of a bird's wing or tail and, at sea, the thin upper end of a lateen yard; the DCECH treats it under peña.^[5][3][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. pena
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, 471
4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pena
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. pena
6. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. pena
7. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. poena
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 5121
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. poena
10. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. ποινή
11. ^ 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. pena
12. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 574
13. ^ 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. pena
14. ^ 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. 1204
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 199
16. ^ 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. pena
17. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 442
18. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. pena
19. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 395
20. ^ 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. pena
21. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. pena