proceso

Forms

proceso m (plural procesos)^[1] Old Spanish texts write processo, proceso, proçesso and proçeso.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin prōcessus (“advance, progression”), a noun formed on prōcēdō (“to go forward, advance”);^[1] Corominas records it first in Berceo.^[3][4][5][1] The Latin verb is made of prō- (“forward”) and cēdō (“to go, withdraw”).^[6][7] In Medieval Latin the noun had come to mean “legal proceedings”, “procession” and “method of dealing with a thing”.^[8] Corominas and Bénaben explain the legal sense by the successive stages that a lawsuit goes through.^[4][9]

The same Latin word is Portuguese processo, Italian processo and French procès;^[10][11][12] French also borrowed it again in its Latin form as processus in 1541.^[10][11][12] In Spanish it belongs with the learned words proceder and procesión, taken from the same Latin verb.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora (1246–1252, known from an 18th-century copy) a sinner kneels before a priest and confessó su proceso tardío e temprano “confessed his whole course, late and early”, the story of his life.^[13] The legal sense appears at the same time: the Aragonese Vidal Mayor of about 1250 speaks of el processo o el iuramiento of a case, and the Espéculo of Alfonso X (before 1260) lets the higher judge send el proçeso “the record of the case” to the lower one.^[13]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word had two lines of meaning: the general “progress, course” of something, especially of time, and the legal “proceedings, record of a case”.^[13][4] The legal sense was the main one for the old lexicographers: Nebrija glossed processo enel pleito with Latin processus, and Covarrubias defined the word only as the written acts of a lawsuit.^[7][14] The Diccionario de Autoridades gave both, “the same as progress” and, in legal language, the papers drawn up for a criminal case or a civil suit.^[15] The Academy later added “passage of time” and “criminal case” (1869), and phrases such as fulminar el proceso “to bring a case to the point of judgement”.^[16][17]

The modern central sense, the set of successive phases of a natural phenomenon or of an artificial operation, is recent: in 1855 Baralt still accepted proceso for “progress” and the passing of time but rejected it as a gallicism when it meant a method or procedure (proceso químico), and also rejected proceso verbal for “minutes, record”.^[18] Alemany in 1917 still labelled proceso verbal an American gallicism.^[19] Today this sense comes first in the dictionaries, beside the legal ones.^[5][20]

Timeline

• 1246–1252 – Berceo uses proceso for the course of a man's life (in an 18th-century copy).^[13]
• c. 1250 – the Vidal Mayor uses processo in the legal sense.^[13]
• before 1260 – the Espéculo of Alfonso X speaks of sending the proçeso of a case to a judge.^[13]
• 1438 – first record of the derived verb procesar; its sense “to put on trial” is recorded only from the 17th century.^[4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses processo enel pleito with Latin processus.^[7]
• 1529 – the first record from the Americas, in Nicaragua.^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as the written acts of a lawsuit.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades gives “progress” and the legal sense.^[15]
• 1855 – Baralt rejects proceso for “method” and proceso verbal as gallicisms.^[18]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology, Latin processus, for the first time.^[22]

Meanings

Noun

1. The action of going forward, progress.^[5][20]
2. The course or passing of time: en el proceso de dos meses.^[5][20]
3. A process: the set of successive phases of a natural phenomenon or of an artificial operation: el proceso de fermentación del vino.^[5][1]
4. (law) The body of acts and steps followed before a judge or court to settle a claim between parties, ending in a reasoned decision; a lawsuit, a trial.^[5][1]
5. (law) A criminal case.^[5]
6. (anatomy) A projecting part of a bone or organ, an apophysis; a use the Spanish medical academy advises against.^[23]

Word family

• procesar
• procesal
• procesamiento

Related words

• proceder
• procesión
• Latin prōcessus
• Portuguese processo

Usage notes

The legal phrases proceso civil and proceso criminal name the civil and the criminal proceedings.^[5] Old phrases of the courts were fulminar el proceso, to bring a case to the point of judgement, and vestir el proceso, to draw it up with all the forms the law requires.^[24]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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. proceso
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 12
4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. proceder
5. ^ 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. proceso
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 571
7. ^ a b c 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. proceso
8. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
9. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. proceso
10. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2714
11. ^ 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, 218
12. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
13. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. proceso
14. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1231
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 390
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 634
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 705
18. ^ a b Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 557
19. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1374
20. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. proceso
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. proceso
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. 867
23. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. proceso
24. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 590