putrefacción

Forms

putrefacción f (plural putrefacciones)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin pūtrefactiō (“a rotting”), a learned word.^[2][1][3] The Latin noun, recorded in Augustine, was formed from putrefaciō (“to make rotten”) with -tiō; the verb combines puter (“rotten”) and faciō (“to make”).^[4][1][3] Corominas treats it as a learned compound of the family of pudrir, which is inherited from the Latin verb of the same root.^[5]

The same Latin word gave Portuguese putrefação, Catalan putrefacció and Italian putrefazione.^[1] Corominas dates the Spanish word only to 1737, but the CDH and DICCA-XV have it in the early 15th century, and the DTME says it is recorded from 1400.^[5][6][7][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest hit in the CDH is in the Spanish Tratado de la epidemia y pestilencia of Velasco de Taranto, which the corpus dates 1410: it warns of the times when putrefacion de aire, corruption of the air, occurs.^[6] DICCA-XV dates its first record to 1417.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The word belonged to medicine from the start: the early records are in treatises on plague, surgery and health, which link the corruption of air or blood with disease.^[6] Enrique de Villena (1427–1428) speaks of the stench and contamination of the air caused by rotting.^[6] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1737) defined it as the act of something going bad, or the state of what is rotten.^[8] Moliner adds the sense of something rotting, or a place full of rotten things, and Vox describes it as decomposition caused by microorganisms.^[9][10]

Timeline

• 1410 – the Spanish Tratado de la epidemia y pestilencia of Velasco de Taranto, as dated by the CDH.^[6]
• 1417 – the first record in DICCA-XV.^[7]
• 1427–1428 – Enrique de Villena's glosses on the Aeneid (in a copy of 1442).^[6]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary renders putrefactio by podrición.^[7]
• 1625 – first record in the Americas.^[11]
• 1737 – the Diccionario de Autoridades enters the word, the date Corominas gives.^[8][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. putrefaction: the action and effect of rotting: el cadáver estaba en avanzado estado de putrefacción.^[2][1][10]
2. Something that is rotting, or a place full of rotting things; podredumbre.^[9]

Related words

• pudrir
• putrefacto
• pútrido
• podredumbre
• Latin puter

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b 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. putrefacción
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. putrefacción
4. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pudrir
6. ^ 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. putrefacción
7. ^ a b c d 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. putrefacción
8. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5
9. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. putrefacción
10. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. putrefacción
11. ^ 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. putrefacción