purificar

Forms

purificar (first-person singular present purifico, first-person singular preterite purifiqué, past participle purificado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin pūrificō (“to cleanse, purify”), a learned word.^[2][1][3][4] Vox dates the borrowing to the 15th century.^[5] The Latin verb is a compound of pūrus (“pure”) and -ficō (“-making”), from faciō (“to make, do”), and is post-Augustan.^[6][7][8]

The same Latin verb gave Portuguese purificar, Catalan purificar, French purifier and Italian purificare.^[1] In medieval Latin it also meant to cleanse from sin, to readmit a woman to church after childbirth, and, reflexively, to clear oneself of a charge.^[9] Corominas dates the Spanish word to the Corbacho (1438), but the CDH has it half a century earlier, in Aragonese texts of Juan Fernández de Heredia.^{[4][10][11][12]}

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record in the CDH is in Juan Fernández de Heredia's Gran crónica de España (1385, in a manuscript of the period), where errors against the faith are purified by a new baptism: fizo purificar por nueuo baptismo.^[11] A treatise on grafting trees and keeping wine, of 1385–1407, uses the participle of wine that has been cleared of its lees.^[11]

Semantic evolution

From the start the verb had both a physical and a moral sense: Heredia speaks of purification by baptism, the wine treatise of clearing wine.^[11] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1737) defines it as removing from a thing whatever is foreign to it, as cleansing something immaterial of imperfection, and as God's refining of souls through afflictions.^[13] Terreros (1788) adds the chemical sense, cleaning natural bodies of foreign parts.^[14] The Academy's 1884 edition added the political sense of reinstating in public service those who had been barred for political reasons, and the sense of the ceremonies of the old Law.^[8] The DLE today also has a legal sense: a right is purificado when it is freed from the condition on which it depended.^[2]

Timeline

• 1385 – first record, in Juan Fernández de Heredia's Gran crónica de España.^[11][15]
• 1438 – the Corbacho of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, the first record in Corominas.^[4][10]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary renders purifico by apurar.^[12]
• 1548 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico City: purificar nuestras almas.^[16]
• 1737 – the Diccionario de Autoridades gives its physical, moral and religious senses.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the political and the ritual senses.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also pronominal) To purify: to remove from something what is foreign to it, leaving it as it should be: purificar el agua.^[2][1][17]
2. (transitive, also pronominal) To cleanse something immaterial of every imperfection.^[2][5]
3. (transitive, also pronominal) Of God: to refine souls through afflictions and trials.^[2]
4. (transitive) To reinstate in state service those barred for political reasons.^[2]
5. (transitive, also pronominal) Under the old Law, to perform the prescribed ceremonies that free people or things from certain impurities.^[2]
6. (pronominal, law) Of a right: to become free of the condition on which it depended.^[2]

Related words

• puro
• puridad
• purgar
• Latin pūrus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. purificar
3. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. purificar
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 698
5. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. purificar
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 883
9. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
10. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. puro
11. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. purificar
12. ^ 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. purificar
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. ^ 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, 253
15. ^ 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
16. ^ 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. purificar
17. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. purificar