seminario

Forms

seminario m (plural seminarios)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin sēminārium (“seed plot, nursery”), in Medieval Latin also “a school for the young”.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin noun is formed from sēmen (“seed”) with the suffix -ārium (“place for”).^[5][1] Corominas lists it with the other learned words of the root of sembrar, which is the inherited verb.^[2]

Vox explains the sense “seminar” of universities as a loan from German Seminar, the 19th-century name of several teaching institutions in Germany.^[6]

The Latin word for seed goes back to Proto-Indo-European *seh₁-mn̥ (“seed”), from the root of serō (“to sow”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first hit for the noun, in a printed text, is Gabriel Alonso de Herrera's Obra de agricultura of 1513, where a seedbed for leeks or cabbages to be transplanted is almaçiga que ellos llaman seminario “a nursery bed which they call seminario”.^[8] The DCECH and the BDELC date it to 1595, in Fuenmayor, with the sense “nursery”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Figurative uses followed at once: in 1527 Francisco de Osuna wrote of the seminario of the enemy, a seedbed of evil.^[8] From the 1560s the word named schools, often for priests: a seminario de treynta niños in a monastery in 1568, the seminaries to be built at Cuzco in 1571, and the English seminaries of Douai in Bernardino de Mendoza's letters.^[8] Autoridades quotes Fuenmayor on the seminaries founded “as the Council of Trent determined”.^[9]

The Diccionario de Autoridades gave three senses: a nursery of plants, a house for the education of children and young people, and by extension the origin or root of something, quoting Góngora's fecundo seminario de Claveros.^[9] The seminario conciliar for the training of priests entered the Academy's dictionary in 1869.^[10] The modern senses “seminar”, a university class in which teacher and students do research together, and “department of teachers in a school”, came later.^[4][11]

Timeline

• 1513 – Herrera's Obra de agricultura uses seminario for a nursery bed.^[8]
• 1527 – figurative use in Osuna's Abecedario espiritual.^[8]
• 1568 – a seminario of thirty children in a monastery college.^[8]
• 1581 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico.^[12]
• 1595 – the DCECH's first record, in Fuenmayor.^[2]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the senses “nursery”, “school” and “origin”.^[9]
• 1869 – the Academy records seminario conciliar.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy derives the word from Latin seminarius.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A nursery or seedbed for plants (semillero).^[4]
2. A seminary for priests, the seminario conciliar.^[4][1]
3. A seminar: a class in which a teacher meets students to do research together: Se apuntó a un seminario de historia medieval.^[4][1]
4. A body in which teachers and students work together to train in research or in a discipline.^[4]
5. In a secondary school, the room where the teachers of a subject meet, and those teachers.^[11]
6. (dated) A house for the education of children and young people.^[4]
7. (dated) The origin or root from which something springs.^[4]

Word family

• seminarista

Related words

• sembrar
• semen
• seminal
• semilla
• Latin sēminārium

Usage notes

The DLE has a separate adjective seminario, seminaria “of seeds”, and in old use “of semen”, from Latin sēminārius.^[4] It is older in the texts than the noun: El Tostado's Libro de las paradojas (1437) speaks of the vasos seminarios.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 197
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sembrar
4. ^ 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. seminario
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. sēminārium
6. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. seminario
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. ^ 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, p. s.v. seminario
9. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 75
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 707
11. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. seminario
12. ^ 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. seminario
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 967