perdición

Forms

perdición f (plural perdiciones)^[1] Old Spanish wrote perdicion, perdiçion, perdiçon and Latinising perdition.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin perditio (“ruin, loss”).^[3][1] Wiktionary calls it a learned borrowing from the Latin of the Church.^[1] This noun is formed from Latin perdō + -tiō, and Corominas explains perdō (“to lose, destroy”) as a compound of dō (“to give”) in the old sense “give away completely”.^[1][4] It is attested from the Late Latin of the Christian writers and the Vulgate, where it means “ruin, perdition”.^[5][6]

The same word is Portuguese perdição and French perdition, which in Old French was first perdiciun.^[7][8] In Spanish it sits beside the inherited verb perder, among whose derivatives Corominas lists it.^[4][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record in the CDH is in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar, of about 1200 and known from a 13th-century copy, which tells that all that the beasts of Egypt had peopled went to perdicion, “ruin”.^[10] Berceo uses it in the 1230s for a disaster or the ruin of a house: non caya la tu casa en tan grand perdición, “may your house not fall into so great a ruin”.^[10][4]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish already used the word for ruin in this world and in the next, and the prose of Alfonso X has the senses “grave harm”, “eternal damnation” and “a cause of harm”, as in fijo de perdición, “son of perdition”, for a wicked man.^[11] The Diccionario de Autoridades added a sense taken from the love poetry of Lope de Vega and Montemayor, “unbridled passion of love”.^[12] The Academy's 1884 dictionary gave the Latin etymon and marked all the senses but the first as figurative.^[13]

Today the word is used above all for a person's moral or material ruin and for what causes it, often something one cannot resist, as in los dulces son mi perdición.^[14][15] A antro de perdición is a den of vice.^[14][16]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar, in a 13th-century copy, has perdiçon.^[10][2]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo uses it, the first record in Corominas.^[4][9]
• 1247 – the Fueros de Aragón, the first record in a manuscript of its own time.^[10]
• 1256–1300 – Alfonsine prose uses it for eternal damnation.^[11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives the Latin amissio and perditio.^[17]
• 1529 – the first record in the Americas, in Nicaragua.^[18]
• 1737 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the sense “unbridled passion of love”.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology Del lat. perditio.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of losing or of being lost.^[3]
2. Ruin, grave harm in worldly or spiritual matters: El juego arrastró a la familia a la perdición.^[3][1]
3. Unbridled passion of love.^[3]
4. (religion) Eternal damnation, perdition.^[3][1]
5. Disorder or dissipation in one's habits or in the use of one's goods.^[3]
6. A thing or person that causes grave harm, a bane: La envidia fue su perdición.^[3][1]

Related words

• perder
• pérdida
• Latin perditio
• Portuguese perdição

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. perdición
3. ^ a b c d e f g 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. perdición
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 488
5. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
7. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. perdição
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. perder
10. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. perdición
11. ^ 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. perdición
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. perdición
13. ^ 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. 814
14. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. perdición
15. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. perdición
16. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. perdición
17. ^ 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. perdición
18. ^ 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. perdición