suspender

Forms

suspender (first-person singular present suspendo, first-person singular preterite suspendí, past participle suspendido)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin suspendere (“to hang up; to leave hanging”), a learned word.^{[2][3][4][1][5]} The verb is formed from Latin sub- + pendō, with the prefix in its variant sus-;^[1][6][7] Gómez de Silva glosses the compound “to hang upwards”.^[1][6][7] In Late Latin of the Church it also meant “to keep apart, deprive, forbid”, the sense of the first Spanish record.^[8][9]

pendō meant “to put in a hanging position”, then “to weigh out” and “to pay”; de Vaan reconstructs a Proto-Italic *pend-e/o- “to hang” and connects it, with doubt, with Proto-Indo-European *(s)pend- “to spin”.^[10] The verb is part of the family of pender.^[2][11]

The same Latin verb was borrowed as French suspendre, which displaced the inherited Old French souspendre, and as Catalan suspendre and Portuguese suspender;^{[12][1][5][13]} Catalan also had the popular form sosprendre.^{[12][1][5][13]} Spanish sopanda “supporting beam” comes from French soupente, a derivative of the Old French verb.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest hit is Alfonso X's Primera Partida (1256–1263, in a copy of about 1290), in the church sense “to suspend from office”: el yudgador quandol suspende del oficio “the judge, when he suspends him from his office”.^[14][15] DEMel also takes its first records from the Partidas.^[16] The DCECH and the BDELC knew the verb only from the second half of the 16th century, in Ercilla.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In the 14th century Juan Fernández de Heredia used the participle suspensos for people held in doubt and expectation, and the phrase tener en suspenso “keep pending”.^[14] Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary of 1492 glossed Latin suspendo “to hang, to hang by the neck”.^[17] Covarrubias (1611) defined the verb as to stop in some business, with suspenso “halted, perplexed”.^[18]

The Diccionario de Autoridades gives three senses: to lift or hang something in the air, quoting Ercilla's En el aire gran pieza lo suspende; to stop or pause for a time; and to hold the mind in wonder at something strange.^[19] The 1884 edition also lists “deprive temporarily of pay or post” and the horse's rearing with its forelegs in the air, and the 1899 edition adds “refuse to pass an examinee”.^[20][21] The school sense “to fail (an exam)” is in the DLE and Wiktionary.^[4][1] In much of Spanish America the verb also means to expel a pupil from school for a time.^[22]

Timeline

• 1256–1263 – Alfonso X's Primera Partida: to suspend a cleric from office.^[14][15]
• 1376–1396 – Juan Fernández de Heredia uses the participle suspensos “in suspense”.^[14]
• c. 1440 – the participle suspenso in Alfonso de la Torre and Santillana.^[2]
• 1492 – Nebrija glosses Latin suspendo “to hang”.^[17]
• 1515 – first record in the Americas: lawsuits suspended in Tierra Firme.^[23]
• second half of the 16th century – Ercilla's Araucana, the DCECH's first record.^[2][19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as to stop in some business.^[18]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades gives the senses “hang up”, “stop for a time” and “astonish”.^[19]
• 1899 – the Academy adds “refuse to pass an examinee”.^[21]

Meanings

Verb

1. To raise, hang or hold something up in the air: Suspendieron la lámpara de una viga.^[4][1]
2. To stop or postpone an action for a time (also pronominal): Se suspendió el partido por la lluvia.^[4][24]
3. To enrapture (embelesar), hold in wonder.^[4]
4. To deprive someone for a time of their pay or post.^[4]
5. To fail or flunk someone in an examination; to fail an exam or subject.^[4][1]
6. (pronominal, of a horse) To rear, holding the forelegs in the air.^[4]
7. (Latin America) To expel a pupil from school for a time.^[22]

Related words

• suspensión
• suspensor
• pender
• suspenso
• depender
• Latin suspendō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. 4, 476
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pender
4. ^ 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. suspender
5. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 6511
6. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 665
8. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. suspender
9. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. suspendere
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. suspender
12. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. suspendre
13. ^ a b Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. suspender
14. ^ 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. suspender
15. ^ 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. suspender
16. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. suspender
17. ^ a b 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. suspender
18. ^ 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. 1312
19. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 192
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 999
21. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 936
22. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. suspender
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. suspender
24. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. suspender