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sábado

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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word sábado

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
1124 a charter in Oelschläger's list More words from the 12th century
Inherited from
Latin sabbatum
Ultimate origin
Biblical Hebrew שַׁבָּת
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
Biblical Hebrew שַׁבָּת (šāḇaṯ)
Ancient Greek σάββατον (sábbaton)
Latin sabbatum
Italian sabato
Spanish sábado
The word's journey
From the same root
English Sabbath ← שַׁבָּת

Pronunciation

  • /ˈsabado/, [ˈsa.β̞a.ð̞o][1]

Forms

sábado m (plural sábados)[1] Old Spanish often wrote sábbado or sabbado, as in Berceo and Alfonso X.[2][3][4] Asturian has sábadu and the metathesised sádabu, which also names a sausage.[2][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sabbatum (“the Sabbath”), from Ancient Greek σάββατον (sábbaton), from Biblical Hebrew שַׁבָּת (šabbāt, “the weekly day of rest”).[2][6][7][1] The Latin word is found in Ovid, Horace, Petronius and Justin.[8] Corominas derives the Hebrew noun from a verb meaning “to rest”;[2][6] the Academy and Corriente trace it further to Akkadian šabattum (“rest”).[7][9]

The same Latin word is Portuguese sábado, Galician sábado, Asturian sábadu, Italian sabato, Sardinian sàbadu and Catalan dissapte.[10][1][11] A variant *sambatum, with an inserted nasal, gave Romanian sâmbătă and the first part of French samedi.[10][12] In Latin the day had been Saturni dies (“Saturn's day”), a name Spanish did not keep.[13][14]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds it first in a charter of 1124.[2][6] The Disputa del alma y el cuerpo (c. 1201) opens with a dream seen un sábado esient, domingo amanezient “as Saturday went out and Sunday dawned”.[15] In Berceo's Duelo de la Virgen it is the Sabbath after the Crucifixion: Amaneció el sábbado, un peceniento día “the Sabbath dawned, a sorrowful day”.[2]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used the word for the seventh day of the week and for the Jewish day of rest;[3] Alfonso X's General Estoria also uses it for rest itself, of a land that lay waste for many years.[3] In León the phrase die sábado occurs in a charter of 1267.[2]

The Academy's dictionary of 1869 recorded the proverb ni sábado sin sol, ni moza sin amor, of something that happens regularly.[16] Moliner adds a gathering of witches said to be held on Saturday night.[17] Hacer sábado is to give the house its weekly thorough cleaning.[7]

The Academy now calls it the sixth day of the week; the 2001 edition added that it is the seventh of the liturgical week.[7][18] In the Americas sábado inglés was a free Saturday afternoon, and in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Peru sábado chico is Friday, especially Friday night.[19] Spanish also passed the word to Tagalog and Cebuano as Sabado.[1]

Timeline

  • 1124 – first record, in a charter.[2][6]
  • c. 1201 – the Disputa del alma y el cuerpo has un sábado esient.[15]
  • 1267 – a Leonese charter has die sábado.[2]
  • 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General Estoria discusses whether Christians err in not keeping the sabbado.[3]
  • 1537 – the first record from the Americas, in Cartagena.[20]
  • 1869 – the Academy records ni sábado sin sol, ni moza sin amor.[16]
  • 1917 – sábado gordo, the Saturday of carnival, in a Canarian newspaper.[21]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Saturday, the sixth day of the week, after Friday: Nos vemos el sábado por la tarde.[7][1]
  2. The Sabbath, the holy day of Judaism and some other faiths.[18][1]
  3. A witches' sabbath.[17]

Word family

  • sabadeño
  • sabadiego

Usage notes

Sábado Santo or Sábado de Gloria is Holy Saturday, the day before Easter.[7][17]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 102
  3. ^ a b c d 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. sábado
  4. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. sábado
  5. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. sábadu
  6. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sábado
  7. ^ a b c d e f 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. sábado
  8. ^ Eguílaz y Yanguas, Leopoldo de (1886), Glosario etimológico de las palabras españolas (castellanas, catalanas, gallegas, mallorquinas, portuguesas, valencianas y bascongadas) de origen oriental, Granada: La Lealtad, p. 511
  9. ^ Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. sábado
  10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7479
  11. ^ Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 433
  12. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 678
  13. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. sábado
  14. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. sábado
  15. ^ 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. sábado
  16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 692
  17. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sábado
  18. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. sábado
  19. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. sábado
  20. ^ 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. sábado
  21. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. sábado

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Sábado.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/s%C3%A1bado. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·