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venta

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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word venta

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
1246 a charter of the monastery of Oña More words from the 13th century
Inherited from
Latin vendita
Ultimate origin
Latin vendo

Pronunciation

  • /ˈbenta/, [ˈbẽn̪.t̪a][1]

Forms

venta f (plural ventas)[1] Old Spanish also had véndida, véndeda and vendia, and Aragonese venda.[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin vēndita, the feminine past participle of vēndō (“to sell”), which in Vulgar Latin took over the sense of classical venditiō (“sale”) in all the western Romance languages.[2][3][1] The DLE and Bénaben read it instead as the neuter plural of venditum (“a thing sold”), taken as a feminine singular.[4][5] Corominas, seeing the old forms véndida and Aragonese venda, does not rule out an early Gallicism, as Portuguese venda and Catalan venda show.[2]

The Latin verb is a late contraction of vēnum (“sale”) with dō (“to give”), which explains its long vowel before the nasal.[2] Its first part goes back to *wes- (“to sell, buy”).[1]

In its 1884 edition the Academy gave the sense “inn” a separate entry, from a Gothic verb meaning “to pass”.[6] Echegaray had the same idea.[7] Corominas treats the inn as a sense of the same word, peculiar to Castilian.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first dated record in the CDH is a charter of 1246 in which Sancha Fernández and Fernando Díaz confirm the uenta “sale” of an estate in Tobalina to the abbot of Oña.[8] Corominas's earliest date, 1206 from Oelschläger, comes from a Mozarabic document that he says should be checked.[2]

Semantic evolution

The legal sense, a sale or a deed of sale, dominates the medieval charters and fueros.[8] The sense “house on a road where travellers lodge” is already in Juan Ruiz in the 14th century.[2] Nebrija (c. 1495) gives only the inn, caupona, and Covarrubias (1611) describes it as a house near the royal road where travellers stop at noon or for the night, deriving it either from coming and going or from selling.[9][10] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1739) explains the inn as the place where travellers are sold what they need.[11] The ventas of the Quijote made the word famous.[12]

In the Canaries and the Dominican Republic a venta is a grocery shop, a sense taken from Portuguese venda; in Chile a stall selling food and drink at festivals; in Mexico and New Mexico the brand burned on cattle when they are sold.[13][14][15][16][17] English travellers took up the word: Thomas Gage wrote in 1648 of a house “which the Spaniards call Venta”.[18]

Timeline

  • 1206 – Corominas's first record, from a Mozarabic document in Oelschläger's list that he says needs checking.[2][3]
  • 1246 – a charter of Oña records the uenta of an estate.[8]
  • 14th century – Juan Ruiz uses it for a roadside inn.[2]
  • c. 1495 – Nebrija: venta, tavera en el camino, Latin caupona.[9]
  • 1495 – the derivative ventero “innkeeper”.[3]
  • 1545 – first record in the Americas, at Puebla: la venta del Perote.[19]
  • 1611 – Covarrubias describes the roadside venta.[10]
  • 1648 – Thomas Gage uses the word in English.[18]
  • 1884 – the Academy splits the inn into a separate entry of Gothic origin.[6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. sale: the act of selling: La venta del piso tardó un año.[4][20][1]
  2. The quantity of things sold; in the plural, sales: Las ventas subieron en diciembre.[4][1]
  3. (law) A contract by which something one owns passes to another for an agreed price.[4]
  4. (Spain, dated) A roadside inn or lodging house in open country.[4][1]
  5. (colloquial) A bleak spot exposed to the weather, as the ventas used to be.[4]
  6. (Canary Islands, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua) A small grocery shop.[21][14][16]
  7. (Chile) A stall selling food and drink during public festivals.[15][22]
  8. (Mexico, Nicaragua) A mark put on cattle to show they have been sold.[16]

Word family

  • autoventa
  • posventa
  • televenta
  • ventero
  • reventa
  • ventorro
  • ventorrillo

Usage notes

En venta “for sale”, of something offered or advertised to be sold, is a set phrase.[4][20]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 768
  3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. vender
  4. ^ 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. venta
  5. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. venta
  6. ^ 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. 1079
  7. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 681
  8. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. venta
  9. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 429
  10. ^ 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. 1377
  11. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 449
  12. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 1149
  13. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. venta
  14. ^ a b Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. venta
  15. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. venta
  16. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. venta
  17. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 1109
  18. ^ a b Grupo IATEXT, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, AMERLEX: corpus of americanisms in early texts on the Americas (online database), p. s.v. venta
  19. ^ 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. venta
  20. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. venta
  21. ^ Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. venta
  22. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 255

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Venta.” Etymologically, 14 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/venta. Accessed 14 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·