sospechar

Forms

sospechar (first-person singular present sospecho, first-person singular preterite sospeché, past participle sospechado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin suspectō (“to look up at; to mistrust”), a verb of imperial Latin; classical Latin said suspicor.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin verb is the frequentative of suspiciō (“to look up at”), formed on its participle suspectus.^[1][5] The base verb is sub- (“from below”) and speciō (“to look”),^[6][7] which de Vaan traces to Proto-Indo-European *speḱ- (“to look”).^[8] Bénaben notes that looking up at someone could mean admiring him or mistrusting him, and Latin developed both senses.^[7]

The verb survives in all the Romance languages except Romanian and French:^[2] Portuguese suspeitar, Galician sospeitar, Catalan sospitar, Occitan sospechar and Italian sospettare.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the verb to Berceo (1220–1250).^[2][3] In the Milagros de Nuestra Señora (1246–1252, in an 18th-century copy) the culprits flee because they fear they will be suspected of a death: serién sospechados.^[11] The Moamín, a falconry book of 1250 preserved in a 13th-century copy, has the sense “to think from signs”: si sospecharen que alguna d'ellas á mal, “if they suspect that one of them is ill”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The two main senses were there from the start: in the prose of Alfonso X (1254) the verb means both to believe something from appearances and to distrust a person.^[12] The noun sospecha is older still, from the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140).^[3][2] Covarrubias (1611) explains the verb as having an inkling or misgiving about something, and derives it from Latin suspicor.^[13] Autoridades (1739) repeats the derivation from Latin suspicari.^[14] The Academy's 1884 edition was the first to give the etymology suspectare, “intensive of suspicere”, and to separate the transitive sense “to conjecture” from the intransitive “to distrust a person”.^[15] Today sospechar de also means to regard someone as the possible author of a crime.^[4][16] Learned words of the same Latin family, suspecto and suspicaz, entered in the 19th century.^[3][2]

Timeline

• 1220–1250 – Berceo, the first record of the verb.^[3][2]
• 1250 – the Moamín uses it for guessing an illness from signs.^[11]
• 1254 – the prose of Alfonso X has both “to believe from appearances” and “to distrust”.^[12][17]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin suspicor as its equivalent.^[18][19]
• 1571 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico City.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Latin suspicor.^[13]
• 1739 – Autoridades defines it as forming a suspicion about something.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology suspectare.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To suspect, to imagine something from conjectures based on appearances or signs: Sospecho que nos ocultan algo.^[4][1]
2. (intransitive, with de) To distrust something or someone: Sospechaba de tanta prisa.^[4][1]
3. (intransitive, with de) To regard someone as the possible author of a crime or fault: Los vecinos sospechan del jardinero.^[4][16]

Word family

• sospecha
• sospechoso
• sospechable

Related words

• suspicacia
• suspicaz
• aspecto
• espectáculo
• Latin suspectō
• Italian sospettare

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 739
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sospechar
4. ^ 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. sospechar
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
7. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
11. ^ 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. sospechar
12. ^ 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)
13. ^ 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. 1309
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 161
15. ^ 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. 991
16. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sospechar
17. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 418
19. ^ 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
20. ^ 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. sospechar