postizo

Forms

postizo (feminine postiza, masculine plural postizos, feminine plural postizas)^[1] Old Spanish had apostizo, used by Juan Ruiz, Juan Manuel and the Cancionero de Baena;^[2][3] Alfonso de Palencia and Nebrija already have postizo beside it.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish apostizo, inherited from Late Latin appositīcius (“added, placed beside”), an adjective formed on appōnō (“to place near, add”).^[2][1][4] Gómez de Silva and Bénaben take the Late Latin adjective from the past participle of that verb, with the suffix -īcius, which makes adjectives from participles.^[5][6] The Latin word is recorded in the Dosithean fragment on manumissions.^[1] The modern form, without the initial a-, appears in the late 15th century and replaced the older one.^[2]

The DLE instead derives the word from an unrecorded *positicius, formed on positus (“put, placed”)^[7], and the Academy's 1884 edition from puesto.^[8] Corominas notes that the adjective survives only in Italian, Occitan and Ibero-Romance^[2]: Italian posticcio, Old Occitan apostitz, Portuguese postiço and Catalan postís.^[9][4] French postiche was borrowed from the Italian word.^[9]

De Vaan traces pōnō (“to put, place”), the simple verb, to a compound of po- and sinō.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the first part of Alfonso X's General Estoria (1272–1275), where the converts hold Christ to be true God and the pagan gods to be sham ones: & aaquellos dioses por apostizos “and those gods as false ones”.^[11][12] The sense was “false, feigned”; in Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor (1330–1343) the word means both “added, not natural” and “false”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Percyvall (1591) glosses the word “counterfeited”.^[13] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as what is not natural or one's own but added, imitated, feigned or laid over, quoting Fray Luis de León (no le es nombre postizo, sino nascido nombre) and Cervantes's tale of a gypsy who sells a donkey wearing a false tail.^[14] Terreros records it for hair, teeth and eyes, and notes its use as a noun.^[15] The Academy's 1817 edition added the noun “hairpiece” as a term of wigmakers.^[16] Salvá (1846) adds a Lima use, the padding women wore under their skirts.^[17]

Moliner adds the senses “detachable” (a collar) and “out of keeping with what it is put on”.^[18] The DLE also has two feminine nouns, postiza “castanet” and a nautical term for the outrigger of galleys.^[7] In the Americas the word is recorded from 1590 in Guadalajara (Mexico), for the detachable sleeves of a coat of mail.^[19]

Timeline

• 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General Estoria calls the pagan gods apostizos “false”.^[11]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz uses apostizo for “added” and “false”.^[3]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia has the form postizo.^[2]
• 1590 – first record in the Americas, at Guadalajara: mangas postiças.^[19]
• 1591 – Percyvall translates it “counterfeited”.^[13]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it with quotations from Fray Luis de León and Cervantes.^[14]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary adds the noun “hairpiece”.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy derives it from puesto.^[8]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Not natural or one's own, but added, imitated, false or put on: Se puso un bigote postizo para la fiesta.^[7][18][1]
2. Of a part of the body: artificial, put in to replace a missing one; prosthetic: dentadura postiza “false teeth”.^[1][20]
3. Detachable, put on and taken off: una camisa con cuello postizo.^[18]

Noun

1. (masculine) A hairpiece, natural or artificial hair added to one's own.^[7][21]
2. (feminine, usually in the plural) A castanet, usually finer and smaller than the ordinary ones.^[7]
3. (feminine, nautical, historical) An outrigger built out from the sides of galleys at the main deck, to widen them and place the oars better.^[7]

Related words

• poner
• puesto
• Portuguese postiço
• Italian posticcio

Usage notes

Nombre postizo is a set phrase of the DLE.^[7] In Mexico postizo was a caste name for the child of a castiza and a white person.^[22] In Andalusian bullfighting it names the pigtail of hair fastened to the bullfighter's castañeta.^[23]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 607
3. ^ a b c d Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. s.v. apostizo
4. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. appositicius
5. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. postizo
6. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. postizo
7. ^ 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. postizo
8. ^ 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. 854
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. appositicius
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. pōnō
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. postizo
12. ^ 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. postizo
13. ^ a b Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 193
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 338
15. ^ 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, 189
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 693
17. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 869
18. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. postizo
19. ^ 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. postizo
20. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. postizo
21. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. postizo
22. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 885
23. ^ Alcalá Venceslada, Antonio (1951), Vocabulario andaluz, Madrid: Real Academia Española, p. 502