poesía

Forms

poesía f (plural poesías)^[1]

Etymology

Corominas makes it borrowed from Latin poēsis, which is from Ancient Greek ποίησις (poíēsis, “creation; poetry”).^[2][3] The DLE suggests that it came instead through French poésie, from the same Latin word, and Wiktionary calls it a borrowing from French.^[4][1] The French word goes back to Late Latin poēsia, the form with the ending of the Spanish word.^[1]

The Greek noun is formed from ποιέω (poiéō, “to make”) with the suffix -σις (-sis).^[1] It meant making or creation in general, opposed to action, and also the art of poetry and a poem.^[5] The Latin word meant poetry or a poem.^[6][7] Corominas also records the rare poetría, from poētria.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

In 1417 the Trabajos de Hércules says of a man who saw another so given to learning that he devoted himself to la poesia, the art of composing verse.^[8] A 1494 version of Cato names the two arts of fine speaking, oratoria y poesia, that is, prose and metre.^[8]

Semantic evolution

In the 15th century the word was the art of making verse, and soon a poem: the Marqués de Santillana and Juan de Mena use it, rhyming in -ía.^[2][8] Nebrija translated it with Latin poetria and poesis.^[8] Cervantes, in the Quijote, compares poetry to a tender young maiden.^[9]

The 19th-century Academy dictionaries defined it as the art of composing in verse, the fire and vividness of images that a work can lack even if it has verse, and in the plural the works of a poet.^[10] From 1884 they called it the artistic expression of beauty in words subject to measure and cadence, with its genres, lyric, epic and dramatic.^[11] The modern dictionaries allow poetry in prose and add the lyric, idealised quality of anything that stirs a sense of beauty.^[4][12]

Timeline

• 1417 – the Trabajos de Hércules speaks of the art of poetry.^[8]
• 1438 – Corominas's date in his short dictionary.^[3]
• 1449 – the Marqués de Santillana, the first record in Corominas's large dictionary.^[2]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia uses it.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives poetria and poesis as its Latin equivalents.^[8]
• 1602 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico.^[13]
• 1605 – Cervantes uses it repeatedly in the Quijote.^[9]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin poēsis and Greek.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. poetry: the expression of beauty or aesthetic feeling in words, in verse or in prose.^[4][1]
2. Each of the genres into which literary works are divided: poesía épica, poesía lírica, poesía dramática.^[4]
3. Lyric poetry above all.^[4]
4. A poem, a composition in verse, especially a lyric poem: Aprendió de memoria una poesía de Machado.^[4][1]
5. A lyrical quality that arouses a deep sense of beauty, in words or in anything else: Aquella playa al atardecer tenía mucha poesía.^[4][12]
6. The art of composing poetic works, in verse or prose.^[4]

Related words

• poema
• poeta
• poético
• poetizar
• Ancient Greek ποίησις (poíēsis)

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 589
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. poeta
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. poesía
5. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f 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. poesía
9. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 887
10. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 616
11. ^ 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. 844
12. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. poesía
13. ^ 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. poesía