variabilidad

Forms

variabilidad f (plural variabilidades)^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Spanish variable + -idad, the noun of quality of variable.^[1][2] Corominas lists it, undated, among the derivatives of vario, after the adjective, which he dates to 1438.^[3][4] The adjective is from Latin variābilis.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Cristóbal de Villalón's El Scholástico (c. 1540), where fortune raises men “with changeableness and no certainty of staying”: sublímalos con variabilidad y sin çertidumbre de permaneçer.^[6]

Semantic evolution

After this isolated 16th-century record the CDH has no other example until the 1860s, when the word comes back in mathematics, artillery and medicine.^[6] In 1872 it appears in a geology handbook in the debate on the fixity or variability of species, and in 1876 in a medical handbook for the changing frequency of the pulse.^[6] In the Americas it is recorded in Uruguay in 1910, and in 1921 a Colombian dictionary glosses it as fickleness.^[7] The DLE defines it simply as the quality of being variable.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 1540 – first record, in Villalón's El Scholástico, for the fickleness of fortune.^[6]
• 1861–1865 – used in a mathematical treatise on imaginary quantities.^[6]
• 1872 – used in a geology handbook for the variability of species.^[6]
• 1910 – first record in the Americas, in Uruguay.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. variability: the quality of being variable, liable to change: La variabilidad del tiempo complicó la cosecha.^[8][1][9]
2. The state or degree to which something varies: Los datos mostraban una gran variabilidad.^[2][10]

Related words

• variable
• variar
• vario
• variación

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
3. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 747
4. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. vario
5. ^ 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. variable
6. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b 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
9. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos
10. ^ Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es