presente

Forms

presente m or f (masculine and feminine plural presentes)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote present, pressente and presiente.^[2]

Etymology

The adjective is borrowed from Latin praesēns (“present”), the present participle of praesum (“to be in front, preside”), from prae- (“before”) and sum (“to be”).^[3][4][5][6] Corominas counts it among the learned words of the family of ser and dates it to Berceo.^[3][4] In Latin the participle meant “being in the same place, present, face to face”.^[7]

The noun “gift”, recorded already in the Cantar de mio Cid, is from Spanish presentar, a postverbal derivative of that verb in its sense “to offer a gift”;^[3][4][8] That verb is praesentō, itself formed on the participle.^[3][4][8] DICCA-XV keeps the adjective and the noun apart for this reason.^[9]

The same Latin word is Portuguese presente, Galician presente, Catalan present, French présent and Italian presente.^[1][10] French borrowed it in 1080.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The noun “gift” is the older of the two: Corominas dates it to the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140), and the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy) tells how Jacob sent present to his brother Esau, thirty camels with their young.^[3][12] The adjective is first recorded by Corominas in Berceo (1220–1250); the CDH has it already in the Cortes of Benavente (1202), in the phrase en este presente “at this present time”.^[3][4][12]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's laws use the adjective for those present at an act, as opposed to the absent.^[13] Covarrubias (1611) records the noun “gift given as a sign of gratitude or love”, explains the name by the saying that one thing given now is worth more than two promised, and records the funeral phrase cuerpo presente.^[14] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1737) gives the adjective “being before someone or in the same place” and its use for the time in which one speaks, as in el presente año.^[15]

The grammatical sense, the present tense, is in the Academy's 1884 dictionary as tiempo presente.^[16] In Guatemala presente is written on letters delivered within the same city.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses presente for a gift, and presentar for offering one.^[3]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar has the form present “gift”.^[12]
• 1202 – the Cortes of Benavente use the phrase en este presente.^[12]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo uses the adjective.^[3][4]
• 1256–1300 – Alfonso X's laws use it of those present at an act.^[13]
• 1444 – the noun presencia is first recorded.^[4]
• 1495 – Nebrija gives the Latin praesens and instans.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the noun “gift” and the phrase cuerpo presente.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary has the grammatical tiempo presente.^[16]

Meanings

Adjective

1. present: being before someone, or in the same place at the same time: Los alumnos presentes firmaron la hoja.^[5][1]
2. Of time, current, the one in which the speaker is.^[5][1]
3. (formal) This: la presente solicitud.^[1]

Noun

1. The present, the current time.^[5][1]
2. A gift, something given as a sign of gratitude or affection.^[5][1]
3. (grammar) The present tense, and a verb form in it.^[5][1]

Word family

• presentemente

Related words

• presencia
• presentar
• representar
• Latin praesēns
• Portuguese presente

Usage notes

Fixed phrases include al presente or de presente “now”, por el presente “for the time being”, mejorando lo presente, a courtesy said when praising someone in front of another person, and misa de cuerpo presente, a funeral mass with the body present.^[5][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. presente
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 213
4. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ser
5. ^ 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. presente
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 567
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b 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. presente2
9. ^ 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. presente1
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2698
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. présent
12. ^ 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. presente
13. ^ 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. presente
14. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1228
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 364
16. ^ 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. 861
17. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. presente
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 400