vil

Forms

vil m or f (masculine and feminine plural viles)^[1] Old Spanish texts write vil and uil, in the plural viles, uiles and once villes.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish vil, inherited from Latin vīlis (“cheap; of little worth”).^[3][1][4][5] The same word is Portuguese vil, Catalan vil, French vil, Italian vile and Romanian vil.^[6][7][1]

De Vaan explains the Latin adjective as Proto-Italic *wesli-, from Proto-Indo-European *wes-li- (“what can be bought”), a passive adjective of the verb seen in Hittite wāš- (“to buy”), and related to vēnum (“sale”); the expected /eː/ would have been raised to /iː/ by the preceding labial.^[8][1] The OLD calls this doubtful, and the DHLF gives the Latin word no known origin.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first hit is in La fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy), where Dathan, Abiram and On rise against Moses and Aaron e tovieronlos en vil “and held them in contempt”.^[11][2] The Semejanza del mundo (c. 1223), the earliest hit without a later copy, calls pyrites a commoner and baser stone: piedra mjlgar e mas vil.^[11]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word covered both low worth and low rank.^[12][13] Alfonso X's Lapidario contrasts base and noble metals and speaks of omnes uiles & necios “base and foolish men”, and the General estoria uses it of people of humble condition.^[12] Berceo's de vil manera means “of humble station”.^[13][11] Nebrija still glossed it as a thing of little price.^[14][4]

The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as low or despicable, applied it to infamous acts and those who do them, and to the servile trades.^[15] The Academy added in 1817 the sense of a person who betrays a trust.^[16] Today it is above all a word of moral contempt: Moliner calls it the strongest term of scorn, implying malice with cowardice, falsehood or ingratitude.^[17][18] The old sense of low value lives on in el vil metal “money” and in the derivative en vilo.^[17][5]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – La fazienda de Ultra Mar (in a 13th-century copy).^[11][2]
• c. 1223 – the Semejanza del mundo, the first hit known from a contemporary manuscript.^[11]
• c. 1250 – the derivative vileza is first recorded.^[5]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario contrasts viles and noble metals.^[12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses it as “of little price”.^[14]
• 1495 – the verb envilecer is first recorded.^[5]
• 1548 – first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[19]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the senses “despicable”, “infamous” and “servile”.^[15]
• 1817 – the Academy adds “who betrays a trust”.^[16]

Meanings

Adjective

1. base, despicable, low: Atacar a un herido fue una acción vil.^[3][18][1]
2. Unworthy, infamous, shameful.^[3]
3. Of little value or esteem: Construyeron la caseta con materiales viles.^[17][18]
4. Of a person: who betrays the trust placed in him; also used as a noun.^[3]

Word family

• vileza
• envilecer
• en vilo

Related words

• Latin vīlis
• French vil
• Italian vile

Usage notes

Set phrases are el vil metal “money” and garrote vil, the garrotte as a means of execution.^[3][17] The adverbial en vilo “in the air, held up; in suspense” (1739) comes from an older en vil, its -o taken from en vago.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. vil
3. ^ a b c d e 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. vil
4. ^ 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. vil
5. ^ a b c d e Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 841
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 7168
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. vil
11. ^ 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. vil
12. ^ 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. vil
13. ^ a b Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 793
14. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 430
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 486
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 892
17. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. vil
18. ^ a b c Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. vil
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. vil