suficiente

Forms

suficiente m or f (masculine and feminine plural suficientes)^[1] Old Spanish wrote sufficient, suficient, sufeçientes, sofficiente and sofizente, beside suficiente.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin sufficiēns (“sufficient, adequate”), the present participle of sufficiō (“to suffice”), which is formed from sub- (“under”) and faciō (“to do, make”).^{[3][4][1][5][6]} Besides “to suffice”, the Latin verb meant “to put under”, “to supply” and “to elect in place of another”.^[7]

Segura Munguía lists Italian sufficiente, French suffisant and the English word sufficient in the same family.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to about 1440.^[3] The CDH has it much earlier: in the Aragonese Vidal Mayor (c. 1250) as sufficient, and in a charter of 1282 on the monastery of San Andrés de Tabliega, which asks for the person más sufiçient “most fit” to fill an abbot's place.^[9] DEMel also cites sofizente from the 13th-century charters of Carrizo.^[2] The early sense is that of the legal language: a procurador suficiente is a duly qualified agent.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Autoridades defined it as “enough for what is needed” and “apt, fit”, the two senses the Academy kept in the 19th century.^[10][11] In the Americas it is recorded from 1539 in both senses, of a qualified agent and of a man “fit for war”.^[12] The modern dictionary adds the sense “conceited, pedantic”, of a person who speaks with affectation.^[4] Suficiente is also the lowest pass mark in school, below bien.^[13]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – sufficient in the Aragonese Vidal Mayor.^[9]
• 1282 – sufiçient in a charter on San Andrés de Tabliega.^[9]
• 1401 – first year in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[14]
• c. 1440 – the DCECH's and BDELC's first record.^[3]
• 1490 – first record of the derivative suficiencia.^[3]
• 1539 – first records in the Americas, in Tabasco and Lima.^[12]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades defines it as “enough” and “apt”.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. sufficient, enough for what is needed: No tenemos tiempo suficiente.^[4][1]
2. Apt (apto), fit, suitable.^[4]
3. Conceited, pedantic; speaking with affectation.^[4][13]

Noun

1. (education) A pass mark, the grade below bien.^[13]

Word family

• suficiencia
• suficientemente

Related words

• insuficiente
• eficiente
• deficiente
• Latin sufficiō

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. suficiente
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. suficiente
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. suficiente
5. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 661
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. sufficiens
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. suficiente
8. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 241
9. ^ 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. suficiente
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. suficiente
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 819
12. ^ 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. suficiente
13. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. suficiente
14. ^ 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, p. s.v. suficiente