puridad

Forms

puridad f (uncountable)^[1] Old Spanish usually wrote poridat or poridad, with rarer puridat, puridad and porydad.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish poridad, the medieval form, inherited from Latin pūritās (“purity”).^[3][4][1] The Old Spanish form was the usual one in the Middle Ages, and the modern spelling with ⟨u⟩ follows puro and the Latin word;^[1][2] Wiktionary therefore treats the modern form as a borrowing from Late Latin and the older form as the inherited one.^[1][2] Corominas lists it among the derivatives of the same adjective, and DICCA-XV also describes it as derived from it.^[5][6][7] The Latin noun was formed from pūrus (“pure”) with -tās, and is recorded from the 3rd century AD.^[1]

Corominas explains the medieval sense “secret” through the sense “fidelity” that the Latin noun has in medieval Latin texts, as in a document of 1133 where a vassal owes his lord homage, fidelity and purity; from loyalty the sense passed to “confidence” and then “secret”.^[5] Du Cange glosses the same medieval Latin word as “the pure and simple truth”.^[8] Meyer-Lübke starts from “purity of intention, sincerity”, which led on the one hand to “discretion” and on the other to the phrase fablar en poredad (“to speak openly, in private”).^[4]

The same Latin word gave Old Galician-Portuguese puredade, Old Occitan purdat and Old French purté, and in old Portuguese too the word meant “secret”.^[4][9] Galician keeps the word in the phrase a pulidade (“alone and in secret”).^[5] The Latin adjective goes back to *pūros and Proto-Indo-European *ph₂u-ro-, “cleansed”.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy), where the hero has the Moors sent out of the town so that nobody should learn his poridad, his secret plan.^[11][5] The Cid also uses it for a private council: the princes of Carrión talk aviendo su poridat, in confidential conversation.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish the word meant above all “secret” and “discretion”: Alfonso X's prose has it for a thing kept hidden, for keeping a secret, and for a private council, and the phrase a poridat meant “in private”.^[12] This sense was still current in the Golden Age, in Timoneda and Cervantes.^[5] The sense “purity” is rare and later: Corominas finds it in Alonso de Palencia (1490) and in Ribadeneira.^[5] Nebrija already gives both: puritas is pureza in his Latin–Spanish dictionary of 1492, while poridad is “secret” in his Spanish–Latin one.^[7]

The Diccionario de Autoridades (1737) defines the word as purity and as secret, noting that the second sense was much used in old texts, and records en puridad “frankly, without circumlocution”.^[13] From 1817 to 1869 the Academy marked all its senses as obsolete, keeping only en puridad as current.^[14][15] The current DLE gives “purity” as the living sense, labels “secret” and “discretion” as disused, and gives en puridad the modern meaning “in reality, strictly speaking”.^[3] Vox labels the word formal.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses poridad for “secret” and “private counsel” (14th-century copy).^[11][5]
• c. 1200 – poridat “secret” in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar, the first record in a primary source in DEMel.^[2][11]
• 1256 – the Picatrix translated for Alfonso X has it for keeping a secret.^[12]
• 1280 – a poridat “in private” in the General estoria.^[12]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary renders puritas by pureza; about 1495 his Spanish–Latin dictionary gives poridad as “secret”.^[7]
• 1564 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico City, in the sense “purity”.^[17]
• 1737 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records en puridad “frankly”.^[13]
• 1817 – the Academy marks the noun as obsolete in all its senses.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. (formal) purity: the quality of being pure.^[3][16][1]
2. (dated) A secret: something kept hidden and reserved.^[3][18][1]
3. (dated) discretion, secrecy.^[3]

Related words

• puro
• pureza
• purificar
• Latin pūritās

Usage notes

En puridad today means “strictly speaking, in fact”; its older senses were “plainly, without circumlocution” and “secretly”.^[3][18] The title canciller del sello de la puridad, the chancellor of the privy seal, keeps the old sense “secret”.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. puridad
3. ^ 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. puridad
4. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
5. ^ 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. 4, 698
6. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. puro
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. puridad
8. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre, p. s.v. puritas
9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2774
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. puridad
12. ^ a b c 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. puridad
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 441
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 718
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 646
16. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. puridad
17. ^ 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. puridad
18. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. puridad