resonancia

Forms

resonancia f (plural resonancias)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin resonantia (“echo, reverberation”).^[2][1][3] Corominas lists it among the learned derivatives of resonar, itself taken from resonō (“to resound, echo”), in his article on sonar.^[3][4] He adds that resonido was sometimes used in its place, as in Alfonso de Palencia's dictionary.^[3]

The Latin noun is formed from resonāns, the present participle of the verb, with the suffix -ia.^[1][5] The OLD records it only in Vitruvius, for the way a building sends sounds back.^[5][6] The verb is re- added to sonō (“to sound”), which de Vaan traces to the iterative Proto-Italic *swon-aje/o-.^[7] Wiktionary takes this back to Proto-Indo-European *swenh₂- (“to sound, resound”), the root of Sanskrit स्वनति (svanati, “to sound”).^[1]

The same Latin word gave Catalan ressonància, Portuguese ressonância, Italian risonanza and French résonance.^[8][1] Nascentes calls the Portuguese word semi-learned, and Houaiss dates it to 1624.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record in the CDH is in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535–1557), for the din of birds in a forest: era tanto el estruendo e resonancia del cherriar e graznar de las aves “so great was the noise and resounding of the chirping and cawing of the birds”.^[11][12] The DTME also dates the word from 1535.^[13]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th century the word was used for sound reflected by a hollow body: in 1551 Bernardino Montaña de Monserrate wrote of the voice in the larynx, and in 1582 Miguel de Urrea's Spanish Vitruvius of a place where la resonancia no se impida “resonance is not hindered”.^[11] Fernando de Herrera's commentary on Garcilaso (1580) used it figuratively, calling dreams the last resonancias of the day's cares, and also defined rhyme as a kind of resonancia;^[11][14] Autoridades took both quotations, and gave the poetic sense as “consonance”.^[11][14]

The Academy defined it from 1843 as the prolongation of a sound that dies away by degrees, a sense it still gives first, and the poetic sense survived as a cross-reference to consonancia.^[15][16][2] The 1899 edition added the musical sense of the overtones that give each voice or instrument its timbre, and the phrase tener resonancia “to be spread abroad by fame”.^[17] This figurative sense of wide publicity is recorded in Bogotá in 1891.^[12] The 20th century added the senses of physics and chemistry and, in medicine, resonancia magnética “magnetic resonance imaging”, often shortened to resonancia.^[2][13][18]

Timeline

• 1535–1557 – Fernández de Oviedo uses the word for the noise of birds.^[11][13]
• 1551 – Montaña de Monserrate applies it to the voice.^[11][19]
• 1580 – Herrera uses it for the echo of the day's cares in dreams and for rhyme.^[11][14]
• 1737 – Autoridades enters it as a synonym of resonación, and in poetry of consonancia.^[14]
• 1788 – Terreros gives the synonyms resonación, retumbo and repercusión del sonido.^[20]
• 1843 – the Academy defines it as the prolongation of a fading sound.^[15]
• 1891 – recorded in Bogotá in the figurative sense of wide publicity.^[12]
• 1899 – the Academy adds the musical sense and the phrase tener resonancia.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. The prolongation of a sound that fades away little by little.^[2]
2. A sound produced by the reverberation of another: La sala vacía tenía demasiada resonancia para la orquesta.^[2][18]
3. (music) Each of the overtones that accompany the main sound of a note and give each voice or instrument its own timbre.^[2][18]
4. (figurative) Wide publicity or impact that an event or a person's qualities gain: Su detención tuvo resonancia en toda la región.^[2][1]
5. (physics) The phenomenon produced when the natural frequency of a mechanical or electrical system matches that of an external force.^[2][18]
6. (chemistry) The state of molecules whose structure and properties result from several valence formulas.^[2][1]
7. (medicine) Short for resonancia magnética, magnetic resonance imaging or a scan made with it.^[13][18]

Related words

• resonante
• resonar
• sonar
• Latin resonantia
• Catalan ressonància

Usage notes

Caja de resonancia is the sound box of an instrument and, figuratively, a place or medium that amplifies something.^[2][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. resonancia
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 302
4. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sonar
5. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 161
9. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro
10. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva
11. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
12. ^ a b c Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies
13. ^ a b c d Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es
14. ^ 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, 595
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 633
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 678
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 868
18. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. resonancia
19. ^ 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
20. ^ 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, 358