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remanecer

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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word remanecer

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Derivation
First attested
c. 1140 Cantar de mio Cid (in a 14th-century copy) More words from the 12th century
Ultimate origin
Latin remaneō

Forms

remanecer (first-person singular present remanezco, first-person singular preterite remanecí, past participle remanecido)[1] Old Spanish forms include remanezca, remanesca, remaneciere and remanexiemos;[2][3] Old Aragonese had romanecer.[2][3]

Etymology

It is formed from Old Spanish remaner (“to remain”) + -ecer, as Corominas and the DLE explain it.[4][5] remaner itself continues Latin remaneō (“to stay behind”), which is re- and maneō (“to stay”); it is found in the Cantar de mio Cid and the Libro de Alexandre, with a preterite remaso in Leonese and Castilian charters from 1050 on.[4][6] Wiktionary instead derives the verb from Vulgar Latin *remanescere, the inchoative of the Latin verb, and Houaiss and Nascentes give the same source for Portuguese remanescer.[1][7][8]

An older explanation, kept in the Academy's 2001 dictionary and in Moliner, took it from re- and Late Latin manescere (“to dawn”), the base of amanecer.[9][10] Covarrubias had already offered both readings: something that “dawns” on us, or something left behind, from the Latin gerund of the verb, “by remaining”.[11]

The Latin verb also gave Catalan romandre, Italian rimanere, Romanian rămâne and Old French remanoir.[1][12] Old Castilian also had remanir, and the verb survives as Asturian remaner.[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) uses it for staying behind: remaneció en San Pero Minaya Álbar Fáñez “Minaya Álvar Fáñez stayed behind in San Pedro”.[13] Menéndez Pidal glosses it “to stay, remain”, and in another line of the poem “to be left over”.[14]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish the verb meant to remain or to be left over: a charter of 1237 wants a property to remain free and clear, and the prose of Alfonso X uses it for staying unchanged in one place or state.[13][15] Corominas follows this sense into Alfonso de Palencia, Lope de Rueda and the Navarrese Azpilcueta (1553).[4] The early records from the Americas, from 1529, speak of funds that remain in the treasury, but a text from Yucatán of 1565 already uses it of someone who “turned out” to be married.[16]

Corominas finds the sense “to turn out unexpectedly” in Bernáldez, the Quijote and Covarrubias, and “to reappear suddenly” in Cervantes.[4] Autoridades (1737) defined it as “to occur or appear unexpectedly” and also “to be left over”.[17] The Academy's 1817 edition gave “to appear again unexpectedly” beside “to remain”.[18] From 1843 it kept only the first.[19] In Leonese the verb still means to reappear, to well up (of water from below ground), to dawn and to stagnate; in Salamanca it is “to wake up”.[20][21]

Timeline

  • c. 1140 – first record, in the Cantar de mio Cid, “to stay behind”.[13][4]
  • 1237 – a charter uses it for property that is to remain free of claims.[13]
  • c. 1230 – Berceo's Vida de San Millán (in an 18th-century copy) has a servant who remaneció bien sano “was left quite healthy”.[13]
  • c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin remaneo as its equivalent.[22][23]
  • 1529 – first records in the Americas, in Nicaragua and Mexico City.[16]
  • 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as something appearing that we did not expect.[11]
  • 1737 – the Diccionario de Autoridades has “to appear unexpectedly” and “to be left over”.[17]
  • 1843 – the Academy keeps only “to appear again unexpectedly”.[19]
  • 1884 – the Academy derives it from Latin remanere.[24]

Meanings

Verb

  1. (intransitive) To reappear suddenly and unexpectedly: Al cabo de diez años remaneció en el pueblo.[5][1][10]
  2. (intransitive, Leonese) Of water, to well up from the ground; to dawn.[20]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. remanecer
  3. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 5567
  4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 812
  5. ^ 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. remanecer
  6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. remanescer
  8. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. remanescer
  9. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. remanecer
  10. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. remanecer
  11. ^ 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. 1255
  12. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 7, 412
  13. ^ 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. remanecer
  14. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 415
  15. ^ 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. remanecer
  16. ^ a b 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. remanecer
  17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 563
  18. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 748
  19. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 625
  20. ^ a b Le Men Loyer, Janick (2002–2012), Léxico del leonés actual, 4 vols., León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro; electronic version, Universidad de León, p. s.v. remanecer
  21. ^ Lamano y Beneite, José de (1915), El dialecto vulgar salmantino, Salamanca: Tipografía Popular, p. 608
  22. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 408
  23. ^ 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. remanecer
  24. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 917
Cite this entry

“Remanecer.” Etymologically, 14 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/remanecer. Accessed 14 Nov. 2026.

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