revelar

Forms

revelar (first-person singular present revelo, first-person singular preterite revelé, past participle revelado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin revēlāre (“to unveil, uncover”), a learned word first recorded in the Corbacho.^{[2][3][4][1][5]} The Latin verb is formed from re- (“back”) and vēlō (“to cover, veil”), from vēlum (“veil, covering”).^[6][1][7] In Christian Latin it was used above all of divine revelation.^[8][9] The inherited Spanish word from the same noun is velo.^[2]

The same Latin verb gave Italian rivelare, French révéler and the English word reveal.^[10] Vox notes that the spelling with ⟨v⟩ follows the Latin and sets the word apart from rebelar.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the first record to the Corbacho of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, 1436 in the DCECH and 1438 in the Breve diccionario.^[2][3] The noun revelación appears in the same work.^[2][3] The CDH has the sense “to make known” earlier, in a passage of the Libro de los fueros de Castiella (before 1284): a sentence fue luego reuelada por vn ángel a vn frayre agustín “was then revealed by an angel to an Augustinian friar”.^[11] Most earlier CDH hits for revelar or revellar, in the fueros (reuelar penos, pennos reuellados) and in Alfonso X's histories (los reuellados), are the spelling of rebelar “to resist, rebel”, and Corominas notes that Oelschläger's list of first records placed the word in the Fuero de Alcalá.^[11][2]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija's Vocabulario (c. 1495) gives Latin revelo and evelo.^[12] Covarrubias in 1611 explained the verb as “to remove the veil”, gave the religious sense of a secret that God makes known to one of his servants, and added that such revelations were sometimes the devil's illusions or the fancies of pious women; revealing a confession was a very grave offence.^[13] The Diccionario de Autoridades had the same two senses, disclosing a secret and God's making known the future or the hidden.^[14]

In 1855 Baralt condemned the wider use “to show, manifest” (su porte revela una persona de cuenta) as a Gallicism, and Román repeated the objection for Chile; the DLE now has this sense as “to give signs or certainty of something”.^[15][16][4] The photographic sense, to develop a film or plate, entered the Academy's dictionary in 1899.^[17][4]

Timeline

• 1436 – first record, in the Corbacho (1438 in the Breve diccionario).^[2][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives revelo as its Latin equivalent.^[12]
• 1563 – first record from the Americas, in Yucatán.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains it as “to remove the veil”.^[13]
• 1737 – the Diccionario de Autoridades gives the secular and the religious sense.^[14]
• 1855 – Baralt rejects the sense “to show, manifest” as French.^[15]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary adds the photographic sense.^[17]

Meanings

Verb

1. To reveal or disclose something unknown or secret; also pronominal: Nunca reveló el nombre de su informante.^[4][1]
2. To give signs or evidence of something; to show: Su letra revela prisa.^[4][19]
3. (photography) To develop a film or plate, making the latent image visible.^[4][1]
4. (religion) Of God, to make known his mysteries to humankind.^[4]
5. (pronominal) To prove to be, turn out as: se reveló como un buen gestor.^[19]

Word family

• revelamiento
• revelador
• revelado

Related words

• revelación
• velo
• velar
• desvelar
• Latin revēlō
• French révéler

Usage notes

Revelar “to reveal” is pronounced like rebelar “to incite to rebellion”, from which only the spelling distinguishes it.^[5] Argentina also has the literary Gallicism develar “to unveil”, from French dévoiler.^[3][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 761
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. velo
4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. revelar
5. ^ a b c Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. revelar
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. revelar
8. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
9. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre
10. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 665
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. revelar
12. ^ 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
13. ^ 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. 1264
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 609
15. ^ a b Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 616
16. ^ Román, Manuel Antonio (1901–1918), Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, 5 vols., Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de San José, p. 118
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 873
18. ^ 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. revelar
19. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. revelar