quinientos

Forms

quinientos (feminine quinientas).^[2][1] Old Spanish charters of 1122 and 1206 spell it quinentos;^[3] quiñentos appears in the 15th-century chronicle of John II and is the Judeo-Spanish form.^[3] The DEMel also records quingentos, quiniemtos and cinccientos beside the usual quinientos.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish quinientos, inherited from Latin quīngentī (“five hundred”).^[3][2][1] Wiktionary and Gómez de Silva start from the Latin accusative plural, and Gómez de Silva gives the Vulgar Latin forms quinentos and quingentos.^[1][5]

The same Latin numeral is Portuguese quinhentos, Galician quiñentos and Asturian quinientos.^[6][7][1] Cunha calls the development of the Portuguese word hard to explain, and Nascentes supposes that the ⟨g⟩ became a semivowel that palatalised the /n/.^[6][8] The Catalan numeral cinc-cents is instead a compound of the words for five and hundred.^[9]

The Latin word is a compound of quīnque (“five”) and centum (“hundred”);^[10][11][1] Festus cites an archaic spelling with ⟨c⟩ in place of the ⟨g⟩.^[10][11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds the word first as quinentos in a charter of 1122 in Oelschläger's list of first records.^[3] The Cantar de mio Cid already has quinientos, at verses 1422 and 1423.^[3][12] Alfonso X's Estoria de España (1270–1284) counts years with it: en la era de quinientos & setaenta annos “in the era of five hundred and seventy years”.^[13]

Semantic evolution

The numeral has kept its sense throughout the history of the language.^[3][2] Covarrubias explained it in 1611 simply as “five hundreds”, and the Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as half of a thousand, deriving it from a Latin quinquecentum.^[14][15] Autoridades also recorded the phrase esos son otros quinientos, said when someone adds a new blunder to one already made, with a quotation from Calderón.^[15] Salvá gave a feminine variant, esas son otras quinientas, in 1846.^[16]

Domínguez listed the saying preso por uno, preso por mil y quinientos in 1846–1847.^[17] Alemany's dictionary of 1917 added the ordinal use, as in año quinientos, and the noun naming the figure.^[18] The DLE now gives these uses as well as the cardinal.^[2]

Timeline

• 1122 – a charter has the form quinentos.^[3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses quinientos.^[3]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España counts years with it.^[13]
• 15th century – the form quiñentos appears in the chronicle of John II.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives the Latin equivalent quingenarius.^[19]
• 1514 – the first record in the Americas, in a date written at Darién.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias glosses it “five hundreds”.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records esos son otros quinientos.^[15]
• 1917 – Alemany lists the ordinal use.^[18]

Meanings

Numeral

1. five hundred: En el teatro caben quinientas personas.^[2][1]
2. Five-hundredth, as an ordinal after the noun: el capítulo quinientos.^[2][21]

Noun

1. The number five hundred.^[2]
2. The figure or numeral that writes the number five hundred.^[2]

Related words

• cinco
• ciento
• quingentésimo
• Latin quīngentī

Usage notes

Esos son otros quinientos is a colloquial set phrase said when someone makes a further blunder on top of an earlier one.^[2][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. quinientos
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 84
4. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. quinientos
5. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 587
6. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2805
7. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. quinientos
8. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. quinhentos
9. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. cinc-cents
10. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 407
13. ^ a b 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. quinientos
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. 1242
15. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 471
16. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 906
17. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 2, 1453
18. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1403
19. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 403
20. ^ 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. quinientos
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. quinientos