pubertad

Forms

pubertad f (plural pubertades)^[1]

Etymology

It is a learned borrowing, borrowed from Latin pūbertās (“puberty, virility”).^[2][1][3] The Latin noun is formed from pūbēs (“grown-up; pubic hair”) with the suffix -tās.^[4][1]

The same Latin word is Portuguese puberdade, Galician puberdade, Catalan pubertat, French puberté and Italian pubertà.^[1][5][6] Portuguese has it from the late 17th century.^[7]

De Vaan explains the base as probably an old s-stem, back-formed from impūbēs (“who has not reached puberty”); he cites Adams's proposal to connect it with a Sanskrit word for “man”, from a root meaning “pubic hair”.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in El Tostado's Libro de las paradojas (1437, in a 15th-century copy), where it is the age at which women can conceive, with the remark that the laws fixed it in another way.^[9][3] Juan del Encina (1481–1496) speaks of his own youth: en mi pubertad me vi qual me veo “in my puberty I saw myself as I see myself now”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Late medieval texts use the word in medicine, in glossaries and in law: Santaella's ecclesiastical vocabulary of 1499 glosses Latin pubesco as “to grow or reach the age of puberty”, and a document of 1526 speaks of a prince coming to the age of puberty at fourteen.^[9] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it in 1737 by the legal ages, fourteen for a man and twelve for a woman, and the Academy changed this in 1817 to the capacity to reproduce, which is supposed at those ages.^[10][11] In 1884 it became “the time of life when the capacity to reproduce begins to show”, and the current dictionary calls it the first phase of adolescence, in which the changes from childhood to adulthood take place.^[12][2] Segura Munguía's date of 1737 is that of Autoridades.^[5][10]

Timeline

• 1437 – first record, in El Tostado's Libro de las paradojas.^[9][3]
• 1481–1496 – Juan del Encina uses it of his own youth.^[9]
• 1498 – the Spanish translation of Guy de Chauliac's surgery uses it in medicine.^[9]
• 1683 – first record from the Americas, in New Granada.^[13]
• 1737 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it by the legal ages of fourteen and twelve.^[10]
• 1817 – the Academy defines it as the capacity to reproduce.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology “Del lat. pubertas”.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. puberty: the first stage of adolescence (adolescencia), in which the body changes from that of a child to that of an adult and becomes able to reproduce: Las niñas suelen llegar antes a la pubertad.^[2][1][14]

Related words

• púber
• pubis
• Latin pūbēs

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. pubertad
3. ^ a b c Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. pubertad
4. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 626
6. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. pubertat
7. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. puberdade
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ 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. pubertad
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, 420
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 712
12. ^ 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. 875
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. pubertad
14. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. pubertad