sendos

Forms

sendos m pl (feminine plural sendas)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish sennos, inherited from Latin singulī (“one apiece, one to each”), taken in its accusative plural.^[1][2][3][4] Corominas derives it from the plural in the sense “one each”.^[5] Old Spanish had seños and sendos beside it, and also senlos and senglos in the Fuero Juzgo.^[1][6][7] Wiktionary explains the ⟨d⟩ through an intermediate *senlos, as in coyunda;^[1][7] Cejador saw in it a dissimilation of sennos, like humilde beside older humille.^[1][7]

The same Latin word is Portuguese senhos (with later sendos), Galician senllos, Asturian senllos, Aragonese senglos, Catalan sengles, Old Occitan sengles and Old French sangle; Romanian singur and the other eastern forms mean “alone”.^[8][9][10] Old Navarrese had siendos.^[8]

The Latin adjective goes back to *sem-g-, from Proto-Indo-European *s(e)m-gʰ- (“single”): Meiser sees in it a distributive particle *-gʰ- with the suffix *-lo- added later, and de Vaan rejects the older derivation from the root “to be born”.^[11] Wiktionary calls the origin uncertain.^[1] sencillo comes from a diminutive of the same word, and señero “solitary” from Late Latin singulārius.^[5][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) is the first text in Spanish to use it, in the forms señas and sennos.^[1][6][7] The sense was already distributive, “one each”.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The word kept its distributive sense, “one for each of two or more”, through the classical period.^[2][7] Autoridades quoted the Fuero Juzgo: E deles ende sendas cartas “and let him give them a letter each”.^[12] Terreros called it an old word, very expressive and useful for avoiding a roundabout phrase.^[13] In 1829 Cabrera complained that the word, revived in his day, was being misused because its value was no longer known.^[14][7]

The misuse was the sense “great, hard, enormous” (sendos palos “mighty blows”), which Salvá and Domínguez recorded in 1846.^[15][16] Bello rejected it, and Cuervo, Batres Jáuregui and Membreño report it from Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras;^{[17][18][19][20][21]} Garzón and Malaret record it in Argentina and Puerto Rico.^{[17][18][19][20][21]} Today sendos belongs to a higher register and always comes before a plural noun.^[2][1]

Timeline

• 1052 – a charter of Cuevacardiel, DEMel's earliest primary record.^[6]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has señas and sennos.^[1][7]
• 1219 – Corominas's date of first record.^[5]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario has sennas colores “a colour each”.^[22]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses it with Latin singuli.^[23]
• 1515 – first record in the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[24]
• 1846 – Salvá records the misuse “great, hard”.^[15]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (plural, before the noun) One each, one for each of two or more people or things: Los dos hermanos llevaban sendas mochilas.^[2][4][1]
2. (regional, Latin America, proscribed) Great, hard, enormous: sendos golpes.^[21][20][18]

Related words

• sencillo
• señero
• singular
• Latin singulus
• Catalan sengles

Usage notes

Sendos is distributive: los tres recibieron sendos libros means each of the three got one book.^[2][17] It is not a synonym of ambos “both”, and the sense “great, hard” was condemned by Bello and Cuervo.^[17][25]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. sendos
3. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. sendos
4. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sendos
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sencillo
6. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. sendos
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 1020
8. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6150
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. senhos
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 78
13. ^ 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, 465
14. ^ Cabrera, Ramón (1837), Diccionario de etimologías de la lengua castellana, 2 vols., Madrid: Imprenta de Marcos Bueno, p. s.v. sendos
15. ^ a b Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 990
16. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 2, 1556
17. ^ a b c d Cuervo, Rufino José (1914), Apuntaciones críticas sobre el lenguaje bogotano, 6th ed., París: A. & R. Roger y F. Chernoviz, p. 394
18. ^ a b c Batres Jáuregui, Antonio (1892), Vicios del lenguaje y provincialismos de Guatemala, Guatemala: Encuadernación y Tipografía Nacional, p. 505
19. ^ a b Membreño, Alberto (1897), Hondureñismos: vocabulario de los provincialismos de Honduras, 2nd ed., Tegucigalpa: Tipografía Nacional, p. 159
20. ^ a b c Garzón, Tobías (1910), Diccionario argentino, Barcelona: Imprenta Elzeviriana de Borrás y Mestres, p. 446
21. ^ a b c Malaret, Augusto (1999), Vocabulario de Puerto Rico, critical ed. by Humberto López Morales, Madrid: Arco/Libros (1st ed. 1937), p. 307
22. ^ 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. sendos
23. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 415
24. ^ 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. sendos
25. ^ Ramos y Duarte, Félix (1895), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Imprenta de Eduardo Dublán, p. 455