siervo

Forms

siervo m (plural siervos, feminine sierva, feminine plural siervas)^[1] Old Spanish spelt it sieruo, syervo and ssieruo.^[2] A Leonese document of 963 has the undiphthongised servo.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish sieruo, inherited from Latin servus (“slave”).^[3][4][5][1] The same Latin word is Portuguese servo, Galician servo, Asturian siervu, French serf and Italian servo.^[6][7][8]

The origin of the Latin noun is disputed.^[9][10] De Vaan reconstructs *serwo- (“shepherd”), from Proto-Indo-European *ser-u-o- (“guardian”), which would make it a relative of servō (“to watch over”).^[9][1] The Oxford Latin Dictionary calls the origin doubtful and perhaps Etruscan, and Wiktionary also mentions an Etruscan source.^[10][1] The verb servir is not formed in Spanish on this noun but continues serviō, a derivative of the noun.^[4][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates siervo to the Fuero de Guadalajara of 1219 and to Berceo, who uses it in its proper sense of a slave or servant and figuratively for bishops who were sierbos de la Gloriosa “servants of the Virgin”.^[3][4] DEMel lists an earlier primary record in the Fueros of the kingdom of León of 1192.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages the word was in popular use for the legal status, as long as servile tenure lasted, though esclavo already competed with it.^[3] Nebrija lists siervo bocal “newly bought slave” and siervo matrero “seasoned slave”.^[3] Alfonso X's prose already has the courtesy formula yo so tu sieruo “I am your servant” and sieruo de dios of Moses.^[11] Afterwards only the figurative and religious senses remained, and the word became literary.^[3]

Covarrubias in 1611 explained the name, after the Roman jurists, from servando, because the victor spared the life of the defeated; he also noted that Pope Gregory was the first to call himself “servant of the servants of the Lord”.^[12] Autoridades in 1726 gave the senses “slave”, a courtesy title, and siervo de Dios “God-fearing person”.^[13] Alemany's 1917 dictionary is the first in our sources with siervo de la gleba, a serf bound to the land.^[14] The current Academy dictionary has a separate sense for the medieval serf, subject to a lord but keeping some freedoms.^[5]

Timeline

• 963 – a Leonese document has the form servo.^[3]
• 1192 – a record in the Fueros of the kingdom of León.^[2]
• 1219 – the Fuero de Guadalajara.^[3][4]
• 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General estoria uses sieruo as a term of humility and sieruo de dios.^[11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin servus and mancipium.^[15]
• 1532 – first record in the Americas, a letter from Panama signed humillísimo siervo.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives the word from Latin servare.^[12]
• 1917 – Alemany records siervo de la gleba.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A slave belonging to a lord.^[5][1]
2. (history) A serf: under feudalism, a person subject to a feudal lord and bound to work for him, but with some freedoms.^[5][1]
3. A person wholly subject or devoted to someone or something: No quiso ser siervo de nadie.^[5][17]
4. A professed member of a religious order or community that uses the title.^[5]

Related words

• servicio
• servidumbre
• servir
• sirviente
• servil
• sargento
• Latin servus

Usage notes

Set phrases are siervo de Dios, a pious person, and in the Catholic Church a dead person whose cause for canonisation has been opened, and siervo de la gleba, a serf attached to an estate who passed with it to a new owner.^[5][17] The feminine is sierva.^[5][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. siervo
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 243
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. siervo
5. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. siervo
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6095
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7875
8. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. siervu
9. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b 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. siervo
12. ^ 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. 1298
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 110
14. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1513
15. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (c. 1495), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca (facsimile, Madrid: Real Academia Española 1951), p. 193
16. ^ 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. siervo
17. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. siervo