raridad

Forms

raridad f (plural raridades)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin rārĭtās (“looseness of texture; rarity”).^[2][1][3] The Spanish Wiktionary analyses it instead as from Spanish raro + -idad.^[4] Corominas lists it among the derivatives of raro, beside the native formation rareza.^[5]

The same Latin word was borrowed as Portuguese raridade, Catalan raritat, Italian rarità and French rareté.^[6][7][1]

The Latin noun is formed from rārus (“loose, sparse, rare”) with the suffix -tās.^[8][1] The adjective's further origin is unclear: a link with Proto-Indo-European *h₂erH- (“to disappear, perish”) or with Ancient Greek ἐρῆμος (erêmos, “lonely”) has been proposed, but de Vaan reports that Schrijver rejects all such proposals.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary of 1492 explains Latin raritas with the native word raleza, not with raridad.^[3] The Spanish word appears in print in 1498, in the Seville edition of Guido de Cauliaco's Cirugía.^[10] DICCA-XV reports an earlier record of 1379–1384 in the CORDE corpus and another of 1425.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Corominas cites it from Góngora and Cervantes.^[5] Autoridades gave two senses: the quality of being rare or sparse, with Góngora's raridades of the air, and the strangeness of an event, with a passage of Cervantes's Persiles on things that happen so rarely they are taken for fiction.^[11] Terreros used it for the low density of bodies, and in the 19th century it was a term of physics, opposed to density, as in la raridad del aire.^[12][13] From 1884 the Academy defined it by rareza, first in two senses.^[14] From 1899 it gave only the first sense, and the DLE now marks the word as little used.^[15][2]

Timeline

• 1492 – Nebrija explains Latin raritas by raleza.^[3]
• 1498 – used in the Seville print of Guido de Cauliaco's Cirugía.^[10]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades enters the senses “sparseness” and “strangeness”, with quotations of Góngora and Cervantes.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology and defines it by rareza.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. (rare) The quality of being rare (raro); rarity, rareza: la raridad de aquel suceso.^[2][16][1]
2. (dated, physics) Low density, sparseness: la raridad de la atmósfera en la cumbre.^[13][11]

Related words

• raro
• rareza
• enrarecer
• Latin raritas

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. raridad
3. ^ 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. raridad
4. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. raridad
5. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 786
6. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. raridade
7. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 637
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b 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, p. s.v. raridad
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 491
12. ^ 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, 282
13. ^ a b Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 51
14. ^ 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. 897
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 842
16. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. raridad