remisión

Forms

remisión f (plural remisiones)^[1] Old Spanish texts spell it remission, remision, remissión, rremisión and remysion.^[2]

Etymology

It is a learned word, borrowed from Latin remissiō (“a sending back; a letting go; forgiveness”), first recorded in 1212.^[3][4][5][6] The Latin noun is formed from remittō (“to send back; to let go”) with the suffix -tiō, and the verb from re- and mittō (“to let go, send”).^[7][1][8] García de Diego gives the popular outcome of the same Latin word as remesón, a sudden stop of a horse at full gallop, beside the learned word.^[5]

The same Latin word gave Portuguese remissão, Catalan remissió, French rémission and Italian rimessione.^[1][9][10] The French form was taken from Latin about 1120, first in the religious sense “forgiveness of sins”.^[11]

Wiktionary traces the Latin verb to *meitō and *meyth₂- (“to exchange, remove”), with a shift of meaning from “exchange” to “give” and then “let go, send”.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first texts use the word in the Christian sense “forgiveness of sins”, which Medieval Latin had given remissio.^[12][13] Gonzalo de Berceo, in a poem dated 1228–1246 and known from an early 14th-century copy, speaks of the sacrifice of the Mass por ont de los pecados acabden remissión “through which they obtain forgiveness of sins”.^[13] A charter of 1241 has a donor give land to the monastery of Oña en remission de mios peccados “for the forgiveness of my sins”.^[13]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija's Latin dictionary of 1492 gave two senses of Latin remissio in Spanish, “rest from labour” and “pardon”, and his Spanish vocabulary of about 1495 had año de remission “year of remission” for the jubilee.^[14] In the Americas the word appears in 1538 in Mexico, of indulgences and remissions, and in 1539 in New Granada in the legal sense of sending a case on to another authority.^[15]

Echegaray's dictionary of 1887–1889 listed pardon of a crime, debt or penalty, slackness, the lessening of an acute illness, and the cross-reference of an index.^[16] The Academy's dictionary of 1899 kept only the act of remitting and the reference in a text to another place, and the DLE still has these two senses.^[17][4] In medicine the word names the easing or disappearance of the symptoms of a disease;^[8] Latin already used it of illnesses.^[8] In Cuba it named a provisional invoice sent with goods inside the same town.^[18]

Timeline

• 1212 – first record of the word, according to Corominas.^[3][6]
• 1228–1246 – Berceo writes of the forgiveness of sins obtained through the Mass (known from an early 14th-century copy).^[13]
• 1241 – a charter for the monastery of Oña uses en remission de mios peccados.^[13]
• 1492 – Nebrija glosses Latin remissio as rest from work and as pardon.^[14]
• 1538 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico.^[15]
• 1899 – the Academy defines it as the act of remitting and as a cross-reference in a text.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of remitting (remitir): sending something or referring a matter elsewhere: La remisión de los documentos se hizo por correo.^[4][19]
2. A cross-reference: a note in a text that sends the reader to another place in it or to another text.^[4][19][20]
3. A lessening of intensity;^[8][20] (medicine) the remission or disappearance of the symptoms of a disease.^[19][8][20]
4. forgiveness, pardon, especially of sins.^[19][20]
5. (law) The suspension of a prison sentence, or the release from a debt or penalty.^[20]
6. postponement of something.^[19]

Related words

• remitir
• remesón
• remiso
• Latin remissio
• Portuguese remissão

Usage notes

The phrase sin remisión means “irremediably, with no way out”.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. remisión
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. meter
4. ^ a b c d 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. remisión
5. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. remisión
6. ^ a b c Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 444
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. remissiō
8. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. remisión
9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2883
10. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. remissió
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. rémission
12. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. remissio
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. remisión
14. ^ 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. remisión
15. ^ 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. remisión
16. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 129
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 861
18. ^ Suárez, Constantino (1921), Vocabulario cubano, La Habana: Librería Cervantes / Madrid: Perlado, Páez y Compañía, p. 451
19. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. remisión
20. ^ a b c d e Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. remisión