pestilencia

Forms

pestilencia f (plural pestilencias)^[1] Old Spanish texts spell it pestilençia as often as pestilencia.^[2][3] The Poema de Alfonso XI has the variant pestelencia.^[4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin pestilentia (“epidemic, plague”), a learned word.^[3][5][1] The Latin noun is formed from the adjective pestilēns (“infected, unhealthy”) with the suffix -ia, and that adjective comes from pestis (“ruin, destruction; epidemic”).^[6][3][7] Corominas treats it, like the other Spanish derivatives of the Latin noun, as a learned word, and notes that the short form peste does not appear before about 1525: until the 16th century the longer word was the usual name for an epidemic.^[4]

The same Latin noun gave French pestilence, recorded from about 1120,^[7] Italian pestilenza^[8] and Portuguese pestilência, recorded since the 14th century.^[9] Nascentes considers the Portuguese word semi-learned.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos (c. 1236, in a late 13th-century copy) a woman from Palencia falls into a fiera pestilencia “a fierce affliction” that leaves her unable to hear or speak.^[11] The DHLE puts the first record earlier, in the Semejanza del mundo of about 1223, where the word means an epidemic disease that kills many people, and it names this as the first sense.^[3][11]

Semantic evolution

Already in Berceo the word was used by metaphor for anything harmful, a person or an event.^[3] From 1259, in Alfonso X's Libro de las Cruces, it also meant a calamity of any kind, the sense of plaga, and the Old Spanish Bible translations used it for Latin words for plague, famine and death;^[12] Alfonso's prose also applies it to a scourge such as the scorpion.^[3][12] In the General Estoria of about 1284 it names a venomous animal.^[3]

When peste spread in the 16th century, the Academy came to define pestilencia simply as “the same as peste”, from Autoridades in 1737 to the 19th-century editions.^[13][14][15] The sense “stench” is first found in Torres Villarroel's almanacs (1725–1744), and Terreros recorded it in 1788.^[3][16] Moliner gives only the two senses “epidemic” and “bad smell”, and the medical dictionary marks the first as obsolete and the second as colloquial.^[17][18]

Timeline

• c. 1223 – the Semejanza del mundo has pestilençia for an epidemic, according to the DHLE.^[3]
• c. 1230 – Berceo's Vida de San Millán uses the word figuratively for a harmful affliction.^[3][11]
• c. 1236 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos, in a late 13th-century copy.^[11]
• 1259 – Alfonso X's Libro de las Cruces uses it for a calamity.^[3]
• c. 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz, Corominas's first record.^[4][19]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin pestilentia as its equivalent.^[20][3]
• 1536 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico.^[21]
• 1737 – Autoridades defines it as the same as peste.^[13]
• 1788 – Terreros records the sense “filth, stench”.^[16][3]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology, from Latin pestilentia.^[22]

Meanings

Noun

1. A serious contagious disease that kills many people; a plague, pestilence.^[5][17][1]
2. A non-contagious disease that causes many deaths.^[5]
3. A bad smell, a stench: Al abrir la bodega salió una pestilencia que obligó a cerrar la puerta.^[5][17]
4. Anything harmful that can do serious damage.^[5]

Word family

• pestilencial
• pestilencioso

Related words

• peste
• pestilente
• apestar
• Latin pestis

References

1. ^ a b c d 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. pestilencia
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Real Academia Española (2013–), Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (DHLE), https://www.rae.es/dhle, p. s.v. pestilencia
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 509
5. ^ 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. pestilencia
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, p. s.v. pestilence
8. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 800
9. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. pestilência
10. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. pestilência
11. ^ 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. pestilencia
12. ^ 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. pestilencia
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 245
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 668
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 558
16. ^ a b Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 3, 116
17. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pestilencia
18. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. pestilencia
19. ^ 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. pestilencia
20. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 397
21. ^ 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. pestilencia
22. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 823