talento

Forms

talento m (plural talentos)^[1] Old Spanish mostly has the diphthonged form taliento, in Berceo, the Libro de Alexandre and Alfonso X's Lapidario.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin talentum (“a weight; a sum of money”), which is from Ancient Greek τάλαντον (tálanton, “balance; a weight of gold; a talent”).^[5][6][1] The Greek word meant first the balance, then a fixed weight of gold and the money it made up.^[5][7] It goes back to Proto-Indo-European *tl̥h₂ent-, from the root *telh₂- (“to bear, endure”).^[1][8]

The modern senses come from the Gospel parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30), in which two servants put their master's money to use and a third buries it.^[5][9][10] Corominas reconstructs the path as “natural gifts that should be used”, then “disposition, inclination” and “will”.^[5] He thinks the Church's preference for good will over intelligence made “will” the usual medieval sense, which Spanish has in talante, a form that came through Vulgar Latin and perhaps from France.^[5] The sense “gifts, aptitude” stayed in Medieval Latin, which used the word for natural endowment and for desire.^[5][11] It returned to the vernaculars in the Renaissance with the preaching of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, in the semi-learned form that Spanish has today.^[5] García de Diego takes that word from talant instead.^[12]

The same Latin word is Portuguese talento, Catalan talent, French talent and Italian talento.^[13][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word 1155 and says it was rare until the 16th century; the DEMel cites it from the Fuero de Avilés of about 1155 and has taliento in a charter of 1145.^[5][3] Its oldest sense in the texts is “will, liking”: the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215, in a 14th-century copy) says that Mary bien se vistie a su talento “dressed well, as she pleased”, and the Fuero de Alcalá (c. 1235) lets a man fish below the weir a so taliento “as he likes”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In the 13th century taliento was a person's disposition or desire, good or bad: Berceo's Saint Dominic was niño de buen taliento “a child of good disposition”, and the Libro de Apolonio speaks of mal taliento “evil intent”.^[2] Biblical translations of the same century used talento for the ancient money and weight, as in the Gospel of Matthew of before 1260 and Alfonso X's General estoria.^[2][4]

The Diccionario de Autoridades has three senses: the ancient coin; the gifts, natural or supernatural, that God gives people to use for others' good; and natural gifts such as wit and judgement, and by antonomasia the understanding.^[14] Salvá in 1846 still lists an obsolete sense “will”, the sense of talante.^[15] The noun also means a talented person, and in the plural, after French, a person's gifts.^[6][16] In Chile talento is a token unit of value at barter markets, and in Puerto Rico artistic ability and the performers who have it.^[17][18]

Timeline

• 1145 – taliento in a charter.^[3]
• c. 1155 – talento in the Fuero de Avilés.^[3][5]
• c. 1215 – a su talento “as she pleased” in the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (in a 14th-century copy).^[2]
• c. 1236 – Berceo's niño de buen taliento.^[2]
• before 1260 – the Gospel of Matthew in Spanish has the parable's diez mil talentos.^[2]
• 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General estoria describes the great and middle talent as weights.^[4]
• 1549 – first record in the Americas, in New Granada, in the parable's sense.^[19]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades gives the money, the God-given gifts and the natural gifts.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin and Greek.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. intelligence, the capacity to understand.^[6][16]
2. aptitude, talent for an activity: Tiene mucho talento para la pintura.^[6][1]
3. A talented or highly able person: Esa chica es un talento del violín.^[6]
4. (history) A talent, a unit of account and weight of the Greeks and Romans.^[6][16]
5. (Chile) A token unit of value used at barter markets.^[17]
6. (Puerto Rico) Artistic ability; performers, artists.^[18]

Word family

• talentoso

Related words

• talante
• Latin talentum
• Italian talento

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. talento
3. ^ a b c d Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. talento
4. ^ 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. talento
5. ^ 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. talento
6. ^ 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. talento
7. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. τάλαντον
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. talent
9. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. talento
10. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. talento
11. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
12. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. talento
13. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 763
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 216
15. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 1029
16. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. talento
17. ^ 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. talento
18. ^ a b Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. talento
19. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies
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. 1006