tarde

Forms

tarde f (plural tardes)^[1] Berceo also writes tardi, for the adverb and for the noun.^[2] Judeo-Spanish has the metathesised form tadre.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin tardē (“slowly; late”), the adverb of tardus (“slow”), and the Old Spanish form was already tarde.^[3][4][5][1] The adverb is common to all the western Romance languages; the sense “second half of the day” arose when it was made into a noun, in Spanish as in Portuguese.^[3] Corominas notes that the Latin adjective itself did not survive as an inherited word in any Romance language: Spanish tardo is a later learned borrowing.^[3]

The same adverb is Portuguese tarde, Galician tarde, Asturian tarde, Catalan tard, French tard and Italian tardi.^[1][6][7] The Catalan noun tarda “afternoon” was taken from Castilian.^[3][6] French and Italian name the evening instead with words from sērus (“late”), as in soir and sera.^[8][1]

The adverb is formed from the adjective with an adverbial suffix.^[9][1] De Vaan finds no etymology for the adjective, and rejects the old comparison with Greek and Sanskrit words for “weak” and “young” on semantic and formal grounds.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has the adverb “after a long time”: „aun çerca o tarde el rey quererm'á por amigo” “sooner or later the king will want me as a friend”.^[2][11] The noun is first found in Berceo in the first half of the 13th century: „Tornava a la tarde con ellas a posada” “in the afternoon he came back with them to the house”.^[2][3][4]

Semantic evolution

In Alfonso X's prose (1250–1284) the noun already means both the time from midday to nightfall and the last hours of the day, and the adverb both “late in the day” and “after the proper time”.^[12] Nebrija kept the two apart in Latin: tarde del día was vesperi, tarde en el tiempo sero.^[13] Covarrubias in 1611 explained hazerse tarde as “night coming on”.^[14]

Autoridades recorded that in Aragon tarde meant the first hours of the night, a sense Borao still gave for Aragonese in 1908.^[15][16] The diminutive tardecita “dusk, nightfall” is recorded from the 16th century and is very much alive in Cuba, Colombia and Argentina.^[3][4] The Academy's dictionary of 1817 added the greeting buenas tardes and the phrases de tarde en tarde “now and then” and para luego es tarde “there's no time like the present”.^[17] In Colombia medias tardes is an afternoon snack.^[18] Domínguez in 1846 illustrated the phrase tarde, mal y nunca “late, badly and never” with a debtor who never pays.^[19]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses the adverb tarde.^[2][3][4]
• c. 1236 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos has the noun la tarde.^[2][4]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario describes stones that open by day and close ala tarde quando se pone el sol.^[12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin vesperi for the time of day and sero for lateness.^[13]
• 1532 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City: „otro día en la tarde”.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as the part of the day from twelve o'clock to sunset.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the Aragonese sense “first hours of the night” and the phrase tarde, mal y nunca.^[15]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary adds buenas tardes and de tarde en tarde.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy derives the word from tardar;^[21][22] Alemany in 1917 gives Latin tarde.^[21][22]

Meanings

Noun

1. afternoon: the part of the day between midday and nightfall; also the evening: Pasamos la tarde en la playa.^[5][1]
2. The weather during that part of the day: ¡Qué tarde tan fría!^[5]

Adverb

1. late in the day or at night: Anoche nos acostamos tarde.^[5][1]
2. Too late, after the proper or usual time; also at a fairly distant time in the future: El médico llegó tarde.^[5][23]
3. In the afternoon, after ayer, mañana and the like: el domingo tarde.^[5]

Word family

• atardecer
• tarde-noche
• tardecita

Related words

• tardar
• tardío
• tardo
• Latin tardus
• Portuguese tarde

Usage notes

Fixed phrases include buenas tardes “good afternoon, good evening”, de tarde en tarde “once in a while” and the proverb más vale tarde que nunca “better late than never”.^[5][19]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. tarde
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 417
4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tardar
5. ^ a b c d e f g 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. tarde
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. tarde
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 6572
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. soir
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 454
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), p. s.v. tarde
13. ^ 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. tarde1
14. ^ 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. 1319
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 228
16. ^ Borao, Jerónimo (1908), Diccionario de voces aragonesas, 2nd ed., Zaragoza: Imprenta del Hospicio Provincial, p. 20
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 830
18. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. tarde
19. ^ a b Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 2, 1616
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. tarde
21. ^ 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. 1010
22. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1561
23. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tarde