plenario

Forms

plenario (feminine plenaria, masculine plural plenarios, feminine plural plenarias)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin plenarius (“full, complete”), a learned word.^[2][1][3] The Late Latin adjective is formed from plēnus (“full”) with the suffix -ārius.^[1][4] In Medieval Latin it meant “entire, complete” and was used of a meeting attended by all; as a noun it named a missal or a book with the Gospels and Epistles.^[5] Charters spoke of the Medieval Latin plenaria indulgentia “plenary indulgence”.^[6]

The base adjective goes back to Proto-Italic *plēnos and to Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁nós (“full”), the source of Greek, Germanic and Slavic words for “full”.^[1] The same Latin adjective is the source of the popular Spanish lleno and of the learned pleno.^[7] Derivatives of it are Old French plenier and Old Occitan plenier “complete”, and the Latin word gave French plénier and English plenary.^[8][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is in Juan de Mena, about 1450, after C. C. Smith.^[7][3] In 1538 a Mexican text speaks of indulgencias plenarias “plenary indulgences”, and in 1551 a text from Panama of a plenario juizio “plenary trial”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Autoridades in 1737 gave three senses: “full, entire, lacking nothing”, with quotations about a complete pardon of sins; in law, the possessory action in which the parties' rights are examined more fully; and in criminal practice, the stage of a case after the summary, when witnesses are confirmed and the defence is heard, up to the sentence.^[10] Terreros called the Latin plenarius a barbarous word.^[11] The Academy first gave the etymology, from Latin plenarius, in 1899, and noted the noun use of the criminal sense.^[12] Alemany in 1917 says that this stage survived then only in military justice.^[13] Moliner notes that today the adjective is used mostly with indulgencia and with sesión or reunión, meaning “of all the members”; the DLE now also has the noun for a full meeting of a body, the same as pleno.^[14][2]

Timeline

• c. 1450 – Juan de Mena, the first record.^[7][3]
• 1491 – the Tostado's Libro de las paradojas, in a manuscript of about 1491–1500.^[15]
• 1538 – indulgencias plenarias in Mexico, the first record from the Americas.^[9]
• 1737 – Autoridades records the general, the civil and the criminal legal sense.^[10]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary gives the Latin etymon and the noun use.^[12]
• 1917 – Alemany limits the criminal sense to military justice.^[13]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Full, entire, complete, lacking nothing; plenary: La propuesta se votará en sesión plenaria.^[2][14][1]

Noun

1. A plenary meeting of a body, attended by all its members; pleno.^[2][16][1]
2. (law) The stage of criminal proceedings that follows the sumario up to the sentence, in which charges and defence are argued against each other.^[2][16]

Related words

• lleno
• pleno
• plenitud
• Latin plenus
• English plenary

Usage notes

Set phrases are indulgencia plenaria “plenary indulgence”, absolución plenaria and juicio plenario, the possessory action of the old law.^[2][14][10]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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. plenario
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. lleno
4. ^ a b Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 573
5. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. plenarius
6. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre, p. 6, 370
7. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 731
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. plenus
9. ^ a b 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. plenario
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 299
11. ^ 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, 160
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 790
13. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1338
14. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. plenario
15. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. plenario
16. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. plenario