seis

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish seis, inherited from Latin sex (“six”).^[2][3][4][1] The same Latin word is Portuguese seis, Galician seis, Catalan sis, French six, Italian sei and Romanian șase.^[5][6][7][1] The Latin numeral goes back to *seks and further to Proto-Indo-European *swéḱs, with cognates such as Ancient Greek ἕξ (héx) and the English word six.^[8][1]

Corominas explains the diphthong: Latin /ks/ first gave /js/ in every position, and the two sounds later merged into the palatal written ⟨x⟩, but before a consonant they did not merge, so that the form used before a noun beginning with a consonant (as in “six goats”) kept /is/, and this outcome was then generalised.^[2] The Old Spanish variant seyes, already in the Cid and still used in Asturias, was made on the model of plurals such as leyes, reyes and bueyes when these replaced older leis, reis and bueis.^[2] Spellings with ⟨x⟩ in early documents, such as ⟨seyx⟩, are mostly Latinising.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) is the first record: los seis días de plazo passados los an “they have spent the six days of the time allowed”.^[2][3][9] The Latin spelling sex still appears in 13th-century texts such as the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

Besides the number, seis named groups of six: the six councillors that some towns chose to govern them, and the six choirboys of a cathedral, at first called los seis, then each un seis, and in the plural seises (c. 1530, Guevara).^[2][4] Covarrubias in 1611 describes the seyses of Toledo cathedral as six choirboys who sang polyphony and lived in a house of their own.^[11] In 1739 the Academy also recorded seises for the six-spot face of a die.^[12] In Puerto Rico the seis is a folk dance, a kind of tap dance.^[4][13] Tagalog seis and Cebuano sayis are borrowed from Spanish.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – first record, in the Cantar de mio Cid, which also has the variant seyes.^[2][9]
• 1146 – first record of the derivative sesmo “sixth part”.^[2]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario writes seys.^[14]
• c. 1530 – Guevara uses seises for a group of choirboys.^[2]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the seyses of Toledo cathedral.^[11]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines the number and records seises on dice.^[12]

Meanings

Numeral

1. six, five plus one: Tengo seis primos.^[4][1]
2. (ordinal use) Sixth (sexto), especially for days of the month: el seis de mayo.^[4]

Noun

1. The natural number six, and the sign that represents it.^[4]
2. A card, die or domino with six spots.^[4][13]
3. (historical) Each of the six councillors chosen by some towns for their government or for a particular matter.^[4]
4. (Puerto Rico, rare) A folk dance, a kind of tap dance.^[4]
5. (feminine plural) Six o'clock: Quedamos a las seis.^[4]

Word family

• seisavo
• seiscientos
• seisillo

Related words

• sexto
• sesenta
• siesta
• Latin sex

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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, 192
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. seis
4. ^ 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. seis
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6104
6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 3045
7. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 7, 941
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. sex
9. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. seis
10. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. seis
11. ^ 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. 1292
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 69
13. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. seis
14. ^ 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. seis