renunciar

Forms

renunciar (first-person singular present renuncio, first-person singular preterite renuncié, past participle renunciado)^[1]

Etymology

It is a learned borrowing, borrowed from Latin renūntiō (“to report, announce; to give up”).^[2][3][1] Nascentes calls the Portuguese word semi-learned.^[4] The Latin verb is formed from re- (“back”) and nūntiō (“to announce”),^[5][6] itself from nūntius (“messenger; message”).^[7][8] De Vaan reconstructs the noun as *nountio-, but finds its further origin unclear: it has been traced to a root meaning “to cry” and also to novus (“new”), which makes no sense morphologically.^[8]

The same Latin verb gave Portuguese renunciar, Catalan renunciar, French renoncer and Italian rinunciare, and it is the source of the English word renounce.^[1][9][10] The REW finds Cornu's derivation of Old Spanish regonzar (“to tell”) from the same Latin verb hard to accept, because the loss of the -n- in that position is unlikely.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos (c. 1236, in a copy of the late 13th century), where the verb still has the Latin sense “to tell, relate”: e de los sus milagros algunos renunçar “and to tell some of his miracles”.^[12] The Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250) uses it in the same way.^[12] The legal sense “to give up” is in the Aragonese Fueros de Aragón of 1247, where a debtor who has renunciado his goods has given them up, and in the Vidal Mayor (c. 1250), where a guarantor waives his time limits.^[12] Corominas dates the word 1220–1250.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Latin the verb first meant “to bring back word, report”; it then came to mean “to give up the use of something”, a sense specialised in law, and in Church Latin “to renounce the world”.^[10][13] Medieval Latin used it for “to renounce, waive” and, in feudal language, for “to renounce one's fealty”.^[14] Spanish took the word with both the old sense “to tell” and the legal one, and only the second lived on.^[12][15]

In Alfonso X's prose a bishop renunciara his see, giving up a dignity.^[15] Covarrubias in 1611 defined it as giving up a right one has to something.^[16] The Diccionario de Autoridades of 1737 added the senses “to refuse to accept” and “to despise, abandon”, and the card players' sense of not following suit while holding a card of it.^[17] From the same period the Academy records the reflexive phrase renunciarse a sí mismo, “to deny oneself”.^[18][3]

The Academy long labelled the verb transitive (renunciar el cargo), and still did so in 2001; the current dictionary treats it as intransitive with a, and Moliner notes that the transitive use is now rare.^[19][3][20] In Mexico it can also mean “to make someone resign”.^[21]

Timeline

• c. 1236 – Berceo uses renunçar for “to tell” in the Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos (known from a late-13th-century copy).^[12]
• 1247 – the Fueros de Aragón use it for giving up one's goods.^[12]
• 1261 – the first record in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[22]
• 1537 – in Mexico City and Lima, in documents giving up offices and renouncing the protection of laws.^[23]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as giving up a right.^[16]
• 1737 – the Diccionario de Autoridades adds “to refuse” and the sense in card games.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin renuntiare.^[24]

Meanings

Verb

1. To renounce or give up of one's own will something one has or could have, such as a right, an office or a claim: Renunció a su parte de la finca.^[3][1]
2. To desist from a plan or undertaking; with an infinitive, to decline to do something: Al final renunciaron a construir la casa.^[3][1]
3. To do without something or someone: Ha renunciado a la carne.^[3][20]
4. To resign from a post or step down from a position of authority.^[1][20]
5. (card games) In some games, to pass; formerly, not to follow suit while holding a card of it.^[3][17]
6. (Mexico, transitive) To make someone resign.^[21]

Word family

• renuncia
• renunciable
• renunciamiento
• renuncio
• renunciante

Related words

• anunciar
• denunciar
• enunciar
• nuncio
• pronunciar
• Latin renūntiō
• English renounce

Usage notes

The verb is construed with a (renunciar a algo); the older transitive construction survives in law and in renunciar algo en otro, “to resign something in someone's favour”.^[20][3] Renunciarse a sí mismo means to deny oneself for religious or moral reasons.^[3] Wiktionary lists abrenunciar as a variant.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. nuncio
3. ^ 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. renunciar
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. renunciar
5. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. renunciar
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ 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. renunciar
8. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. renunciar
10. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. renoncer
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
12. ^ 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. renunciar
13. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
15. ^ 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. renunciar
16. ^ 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. 1258
17. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 575
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 752
19. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. renunciar
20. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. renunciar
21. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. renunciar
22. ^ 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
23. ^ 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. renuciar
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. 921