percusión

Forms

percusión f (plural percusiones)^[1] Fifteenth-century texts spell it percussion, percussyón and percuçion.^[2] A record of 1583 from Mexico City has percución.^[3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin percussio (“a beating, striking”), a noun of action formed on percutiō (“to strike”).^[4][1][5] The Latin verb is made of per- and quatiō (“to shake”).^[1][6] Corominas lists the word in the family of discutir, another compound of the same verb, and gives no date for it.^[7][8]

De Vaan counts the compound, which he glosses “to strike heavily, kill”, among the derivatives of the simple verb, and reconstructs that verb, with a question mark, as *(s)kuot-i-.^[9] The same Latin noun is Italian percussione, French percussion, Catalan percussió and Portuguese percussão.^[10][11][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest record is in a medical treatise by Estéfano de Sevilla, written before 1400, where an ignorant art is said to kill two people, the wounded man and the one who gave him the percussion, that is, the blow.^[2] In Enrique de Villena's works of 1424 and 1427–1428 it means the striking of a ray of light or of a sound against the air: faziendo temblar el aire de la percusión de aquel sonido “making the air tremble with the striking of that sound”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In the Bible of Alba (c. 1422–1433) percuçion is the slaughter that God inflicted on the Gibeonites and the Philistines, a sense of the biblical Latin, which Medieval Latin also used for a punishment or a plague.^[2][13] Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary of 1492 rendered Latin percussio as herida “blow, wound”.^[8] In the Americas the word is recorded from 1583, for the sound made when two bodies strike each other.^[3]

The Academy's 1899 dictionary defined it simply as the action and effect of percutir.^[14] Alemany (1917) added the firearm and its lock de percusión, in which a blow fires the charge, and the musical instrumento de percusión.^[15] The plural collective sense, the percussion section of an orchestra, is now the DLE's second sense, and medicine uses it for examining the body by tapping it and listening to the sound.^[4][16][17] From it Spanish has formed percusionista “percussionist”.^[10]

Timeline

• a. 1400 – Estéfano de Sevilla uses percussion for a blow in a medical treatise.^[2]
• c. 1422–1433 – the Bible of Alba uses percuçion for a slaughter sent by God.^[2]
• 1424 – Enrique de Villena writes of the percusión of a ray of light.^[2]
• 1492 – Nebrija glosses Latin percussio with herida.^[8]
• 1583 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico City.^[3]
• 1899 – the Academy defines it as the action and effect of striking, from Latin percussio.^[14]
• 1917 – Alemany records instrumento de percusión and the percussion lock of firearms.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of striking, especially of striking repeatedly; a blow or impact: La percusión del martillo se oía desde la calle.^[4][18][16]
2. (music) The percussion instruments of an orchestra or band, taken together: La percusión entró con un redoble.^[4][18][1]
3. (medicine) A method of examination in which a part of the body is tapped with the fingers or an instrument and the sound is noted.^[16][18][17]

Word family

• percusionista

Related words

• percutir
• repercusión
• discutir
• percutor
• Latin percussio

Usage notes

Common phrases are instrumento de percusión “percussion instrument” and arma de percusión “percussion weapon”.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. percusión
3. ^ a b c 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. percusión
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. percusión
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. percutir
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 501
8. ^ 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. percusión
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b 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. 643
11. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. percussió
12. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. percussão
13. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 764
15. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1294
16. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. percusión
17. ^ a b Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. percusión
18. ^ a b c Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. percusión