ser

Forms

ser (first-person singular present soy, first-person singular preterite fui, past participle sido)^[1] Old Spanish had the infinitive seer beside ser, and Aragonese seyer.^[2][3] Old forms of sedere with the sense “to be” include the imperfect sedié, the preterite sovo and a present seo.^[2] The first person so was used for soy in the old language and survived in rustic speech.^[4]

Etymology

The verb merges two Latin verbs.^[2][5] Most of its forms continue inherited from Latin esse (“to be”), in the Vulgar Latin infinitive *essere that replaced classical esse.^[2][6][1] The others, including the infinitive, the future and conditional, the present subjunctive and imperative and the non-finite forms, are inherited from Latin sedēre (“to be seated”), which in Castilian and Portuguese weakened its sense to “to be (somewhere)” and then “to be”, as Old Spanish seer.^[2][5][7] The Academy's dictionary has derived ser from seer since 1899; its 1884 edition still gave Latin esse.^[8][9][10]

The Peregrinatio Aetheriae of the 4th century already uses sedere loosely, close to “be” according to Anglade, though Geyer reads it as “stay”.^[2] In the Glosas Silenses the same verb translates Latin esse.^[2][3] Corominas doubts that the change of meaning alone would have separated Castilian and Portuguese so sharply from the other Romance languages, where Catalan seure still means only “to sit”, and sees the decisive cause in a confusion of sounds: once the stress of the infinitives in -ēre had moved to the ending, the verb for “to sit” tended to shrink to ser, while *essere tended everywhere to lose its unstressed first syllable, as in French sera and Italian sarà.^[2] The sense “to sit” lasted in Old Spanish, mainly until the first half of the 14th century.^[2]

Wiktionary derives sois from Vulgar Latin *sutis, and the subjunctive sea either from sedeām through Old Spanish *seya or from the Latin subjunctive stem sī- with the endings of the third conjugation.^[1] Old Spanish so, later soy, continues sum, era continues eram, and the preterite fui continues fuī, from another root.^[11]

The same Latin verb is Italian essere, Sardinian èssere, French être and Catalan ésser or ser, while Portuguese ser and Galician ser share the Spanish fusion with the Latin verb for “to sit”.^[6][12][13] sum goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₁es- “to be”, and its perfect to *bʰuH- “to become”.^[14][1] sedeō goes back to *sed- “to sit”.^[15][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Glosas Silenses and Emilianenses of the 10th century already contain several forms of the verb.^[2][5] In the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) Rodrigo tells Álvar Fáñez that they are exiled: „¡Albricia, Álbar Fáñez, ca echados somos de tierra!” “Good news, Álvar Fáñez, for we are driven out of the land!”.^[16] The Auto de los Reyes Magos (c. 1180) uses it as a copula: „No sé quál es achesta strela” “I do not know which star this is”.^[16]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used ser in many places where the modern language uses estar, to say where someone is (no era en casa), and the Cid joins it to adjectives and participles that now take estar.^[7][17] Covarrubias in 1611 noted that it sometimes means “value”.^[18] Autoridades described it as the substantive, irregular and auxiliary verb of the passive, and recorded its senses “to be somewhere”, “to belong to” and “to happen”.^[4] Bello's rule, quoted by Román, gave ser the essential and lasting qualities and estar the accidental and passing ones.^[19]

The infinitive was used as a noun by the 16th century.^[5] DICCA-XV gives 1430–40 as the first record of the noun in the CORDE, and Nebrija's Latin dictionary of 1492 glosses Latin essentia as „el ser mesmo” “being itself”.^[20] Autoridades defined the noun as the essence and entity of things.^[4] The phrases estar en ser and tener en ser, “to be in existence, untouched”, used in inventories, gave the noun enseres “household goods”, in the Academy's dictionary by 1817.^[5][2] Purists in Chile still criticised the use of ser for “person, creature” as a Gallicism.^[21]

Timeline

• 900s – the Glosas Silenses and Emilianenses contain forms of the verb, and render Latin esse with sedere.^[2]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has somos, and still uses ser in the old sense “to sit down”.^[16][2]
• c. 1180 – the Auto de los Reyes Magos uses es as a copula.^[16]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses it as copula, passive auxiliary and in the sense “to exist”.^[22]
• 1430–40 – the first record of the noun ser in the CORDE, as DICCA-XV reports.^[20]
• 1493 – the first record from the Americas, in a text from the Indies.^[23]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin sum, es, fui, esse.^[24]
• 1591 – Percyvall gives soy, era, fuy and translates “to be”.^[25]
• 1817 – the derived noun enseres is in the Academy's dictionary.^[2]
• 1884 – the Academy derives ser from Latin esse; in 1899 it changes the etymology to Old Spanish seer.^[9][8]

Meanings

Verb

1. (copulative) be: links the subject with what is said of it, its identity, nature or class: Mi hermana es médica.^[10][1]
2. (auxiliary) Forms the passive voice of other verbs: La carta fue escrita por su madre.^[10][1]
3. To exist: Pienso, luego soy.^[10][1]
4. Used to tell the time: Son las cinco y media.^[10]
5. To be for, to serve for: Esta caja es para los libros.^[10]
6. To be in a place or situation.^[10]
7. To happen, take place: La reunión será el lunes.^[10][1]
8. To cost: ¿A cuánto es el kilo?^[10]
9. With de, to belong to: Esta casa es de mi abuelo.^[10]
10. With de, to come from or be a member of: Somos de Sevilla.^[10][26]

Noun

1. A being, living thing: un ser humano.^[27][1]
2. essence, nature.^[27][1]
3. Life, existence, in dar el ser “to give life”.^[27]

Word family

• enseres

Related words

• estar
• esencia
• ente
• presente
• futuro
• interés
• sentar
• Latin sum
• Latin sedeo

Usage notes

The noun ser is the infinitive used as a noun, not a separate word.^[20][5] Érase una vez and érase que se era open fairy tales.^[1][28] Spanish divides the English “to be” between ser and estar.^[19]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 213
3. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6022
4. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 93
5. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ser
6. ^ a b 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. 3, 712
7. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ser
8. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 909
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 970
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. ser
11. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. ser
12. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 3064
13. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. ser
14. ^ 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. sum
15. ^ 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. sedeo
16. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. ser
17. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 439
18. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1294
19. ^ a b 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. 309
20. ^ a b c 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, p. s.v. ser
21. ^ 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. 246
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. ser
23. ^ 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. seer
24. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 415
25. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 213
26. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1505
27. ^ a b c Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. ser
28. ^ 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. 1027