sueldo

Forms

sueldo m (plural sueldos)^[1] Old Spanish has soldo and sueldo side by side, with the spellings ssueldos, zueldos, ssoldos and the forms suellos and sollos.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin solidus (“a gold coin”), the classical Latin adjective “solid” used as a noun.^[3][4][5] Wiktionary gives the chain through the contracted soldus.^[1] The contracted form already occurs in Varro and Horace.^[6] As the name of a coin it appears in the Digest and other late texts; some explain the name by the gold of the coin, as against the base metal of lesser coins, others by its fixed value while other coins lost theirs, and Corominas ties it in any case to the long economic crisis of the late Empire.^[3] The learned doublet is sólido.^[4][1]

The same word is Portuguese soldo, Galician soldo, Asturian sueldu and Catalan sou.^[7][8][9] The Late Latin noun became Old French souz and sous, the ancestors of French sou, and Italian soldo meant “pay”.^[10]

De Vaan traces the Latin adjective to Proto-Indo-European *solh₂-i-dʰh₁-o- (“entire”), from the root Proto-Indo-European *solh₂- (“whole”) of salvus.^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DCECH records soldo in a charter of 1062–1063 and sueldo in one of 1129, from Oelschläger's list.^[3][4] In these and in Berceo, the Fuero Juzgo and Juan Ruiz it is the name of a coin; the CDH's first copy without a later witness is a list of expenses of the 13th century, with sums .ii. soldos.^[3][12]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages the sueldo was a coin, a twentieth of the libra, and in Alfonso X's prose it also renders the Roman gold solidus.^[13] The pay of mercenary soldiers was for a time one sueldo, so the word came to mean “a soldier's pay”, recorded from 1490 by Alfonso de Palencia and in Nebrija's sueldo en la guerra.^[3][4] The Autoridades extended it to the wages of servants (1739).^[4][14] From there it became the general word for a salary.^[3] In Aragon a sueldo was still an imaginary money of account of eight cuartos in the 19th century.^[15]

The phrase a sueldo “paid, hired” keeps the old sense of mercenary service.^[1][3] The word was borrowed into Tagalog and Cebuano as suweldo.^[1]

Timeline

• 1062–1063 – soldo in a charter.^[3]
• 1129 – sueldo in a charter.^[3][4]
• c. 1140 – the derivative soldada “pay” in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[4][3]
• 1256–1300 – the Siete Partidas fix a teacher's fee in sueldos.^[13]
• 1490 – “soldier's pay”, in Alfonso de Palencia.^[4][3]
• 1524 – first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as the stipend of the soldier.^[17]
• 1739 – the Autoridades adds the wages of servants.^[4][14]

Meanings

Noun

1. salary, wage: the regular pay for a post or a professional service.^[5][1]
2. (historical) A coin of varying value in different times and countries, a twentieth of the libra.^[5][1]
3. (historical) The solidus (sólido), a Roman gold coin.^[5]

Word family

• soldada
• asoldar

Related words

• soldado
• soldar
• sólido
• saldo
• Latin solidus
• Portuguese soldo

Usage notes

Sueldo bueno or sueldo burgalés was a Castilian coin worth twelve dineros.^[5][13] Sueldo a libra or sueldo por libra expresses a share in proportion to each part.^[5][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. sueldo
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 325
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sueldo
5. ^ a b c d e f 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. sueldo
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. solidus
8. ^ 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. 8, 122
9. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. sueldu
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
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 (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. sueldo
13. ^ a b c 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. sueldo
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 176
15. ^ Borao, Jerónimo (1908), Diccionario de voces aragonesas, 2nd ed., Zaragoza: Imprenta del Hospicio Provincial, p. 20
16. ^ a b 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. sueldo
17. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1310