Spanish words from Latin
1817 Spanish words with Latin in their history, whether borrowed directly or passed on through other languages (page 8).
cualitativo
It is borrowed from Medieval Latin quālitātīvus (“qualitative”). Du Cange cites the Medieval Latin word, meaning “constituting the quality or nature of a thing”, from a letter of Gerbert. It is…
cuando
It is inherited from Latin quandō (“when”); Old Spanish quando is recorded from the 10th century. The Latin word was both temporal, “when”, and causal, “since”, and replaced cum in these uses. The…
cuanto
It is inherited from Latin quantus (“how great, how much”). Old Spanish wrote it quanto. The short form cuán probably comes from the neuter quantum by apocope, according to Corominas, while the…
cuarto
It is inherited from Latin quartus (“fourth”), the ordinal of quattuor (“four”). The Old Spanish spelling was quarto. Corominas explains the noun “room” through the use of cuatro for a small, vague…
cuatro
It is inherited from Latin quattŭor (“four”), through Old Spanish quatro. The DCECH notes that the only correct Latin form had ⟨tt⟩. Gómez de Silva gives the Vulgar Latin forms quatro and quattor…
cubrir
It is inherited from Old Spanish cobrir, inherited from Latin cooperiō (“to cover completely”). The irregular participle cubierto continues coopertus. Covarrubias already explained it as a…
cuchillo
It is inherited from Latin cultellus (“small knife”), a diminutive of culter (“knife; ploughshare”), and its Old Spanish form was cuchiello. The same Latin word is Portuguese cutelo (older coitelo)…
cuello
It is inherited from Old Spanish cuello, inherited from Latin collum (“neck”). The short stressed /o/ of the Latin word gave the diphthong /we/ in Castilian, unlike Catalan. The same word is…
cuento
It is inherited from Latin computus (“calculation, reckoning”), the noun of computō (“to calculate, count up”). Wiktionary gives the Vulgar Latin form as *contus or *comptus. The Latin verb is made…
cuerda
It is inherited from Latin chorda (“string of a musical instrument; rope, cord”), which is from Ancient Greek χορδή (khordḗ, “gut, tripe; string made of gut”). The word means “rope, cord” in all the…
cuero
It is inherited from Latin corium (“skin of a man or an animal, hide”). The same word is Portuguese couro, Galician coiro, Catalan cuir, French cuir and Italian cuoio. Old Portuguese and Galician…
cuerpo
It is inherited from Old Spanish cuerpo, inherited from Latin corpus (“body”). Latin corpus was neuter and should first have given a singular ending in -s, with a plural from corpora; this is what…
cuervo
It is inherited from Latin corvus (“raven”), and the Old Spanish word had the same form, often written ⟨cueruo⟩. The stressed vowel of the Latin word, a short o, appears as the diphthong ⟨ue⟩ in…
cuesta
The word is inherited from Latin costa (“rib; side”), which in Romance came to mean the side of a mountain and then sloping ground. The plural cuestas meant “back” in Old Spanish, a direct…
cuestión
It is borrowed from Latin quaestiō (“search; inquiry; problem”), a learned word. It is formed from Latin quaerō (“to seek, ask”) + -tiō. It therefore belongs to the family of querer, the inherited…
cueva
It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *cova (“hollow (one)”), the feminine of Latin covus (“hollow”), an archaic variant of cavus (“hollow”). Wiktionary also allows a variant of Late Latin cava, and…
cuidar
It is inherited from Old Spanish cuidar (“to think”), inherited from Latin cōgitō (“to think”). Corominas traces the sound changes as /koyedár/ > /koydár/ > /kuydár/ > /kujdár/: the fricative /y/…
culo
It is inherited from Old Spanish culo, inherited from Latin cūlus (“backside, arse”). In Latin it was a popular word, found in graffiti, satire and the Priapea, and it survives in all the Romance…
culpa
It is a learned borrowing, borrowed from Latin culpa (“fault, blame”). The inherited form was Old Spanish colpa, which did not survive. The Latin word is continued in Italian colpa and Occitan…
culpable
It is borrowed from Latin culpābilis (“blameworthy; guilty”). Corominas dates it from the middle of the 16th century, but the CDH has it in 13th-century fueros. The Latin adjective is formed from…
cultivar
It is borrowed from Medieval Latin cultīvō (“to till, cultivate”). Corominas explains the Medieval Latin verb as a Latinisation of Old French coutiver (12th century) or Italian coltivare (Dante)…
cumplir
It is inherited from Latin compleō (“to fill, complete”); the Old Spanish forms were cumplir and complir. Wiktionary sets up a Vulgar Latin *complīre, with a change of conjugation to the ⟨-ir⟩…
cuota
It is a learned word, borrowed from Latin quota (“how great (a part)”), the feminine of quotus (“how many, of what number”). Corominas explains it as a shortening of the older Spanish cuota parte…
cura
It is inherited from Latin cūra (“care, concern”). The priest was named for the “cure of souls”, the spiritual care of the parishioners in his charge: Corominas thinks that the feminine noun, or the…
curioso
It is borrowed from Latin cūriōsus (“careful; eager to know”), a learned word. The Latin adjective is formed from cūra (“care”) with the suffix -ōsus, although Leumann, cited by de Vaan, explains it…
daño
It is inherited from Old Spanish danno, inherited from Latin damnum (“loss, expense; harm”). The same Latin word is Portuguese dano, Galician dano, Asturian dañu, Catalan dany, Old Occitan dan…
dar
It is inherited from Old Spanish dar, inherited from Latin dare (“to give”). Corominas doubts that the modern first person ⟨doy⟩ grew out of the old diphthong of dou. He suggests rather that the…
data
It is borrowed from Late Latin data (“given”), the feminine past participle of dō (“to give”), understood with charta (“document”): the document “given”, that is, issued or granted. In Latin…
de
It is inherited from Old Spanish de, inherited from Latin dē (“from, down from; about”). In Latin the particle marked origin, moving away and separation, and as a prefix it formed verbs of privation…
deber
It is inherited from Latin dēbeō (“to owe, be under an obligation”) (infinitive ⟨dēbēre⟩); it is spelt Old Spanish dever in the oldest texts. The noun meaning “duty” is the infinitive used as a…
débil
It is borrowed from Latin dēbilis (“weak, feeble; crippled”), a learned word. Wiktionary is more cautious and calls it possibly a learned borrowing. The popular outcome of the same Latin word was…
decidir
It is borrowed from Latin dēcīdō (“to cut off; to decide, settle”). The Latin verb is formed from dē- (“down, off”) and caedō (“to cut”), so that its figurative sense is “to cut short, settle” a…
decir
It is inherited from Old Spanish dezir, inherited from Latin dīcere (“to say”). Only Castilian and some Galician dialects moved the verb into the conjugation in ⟨-ir⟩: Portuguese dizer and Asturian…
decisión
It is a learned word, borrowed from Latin dēcīsiō (“settlement, agreement”). Corominas counts it, like decidir and decisivo, among the Latinisms of the family. The Latin noun is formed from dēcīdō…
declaración
It is borrowed from Latin dēclārātiō (“a making known, disclosure”), the noun of action of dēclārō (“to make clear, make known”) with the suffix -tiō. The DCECH lists it among the derivatives of…
declarar
It is inherited from Old Spanish declarar, borrowed from Latin dēclārō (“to make clear; to make known”). Corominas treats it as a learned word, listed under claro, and dates it to Berceo. The Latin…
dedo
It is inherited from Old Spanish dedo, inherited from Latin digitus (“finger, toe”). The same word is Portuguese dedo, Galician dedo, Catalan dit, French doigt, Italian dito and Romanian deget…
defender
It is inherited from Latin dēfendō (“to ward off, repel; to protect”), and Old Spanish defender has the same form from the 12th century on. Corominas calls it a very old semi-learned word, and…
defensa
It is borrowed from Late Latin dēfēnsa (“defence”), the feminine of dēfēnsus, past participle of dēfendō (“to ward off; to defend”). Lewis and Short record the Latin noun in Tertullian. Before it…
degradar
It is borrowed from Late Latin degradō (“to reduce to a lower rank”). Wiktionary calls the source Ecclesiastical Latin, and the verb is formed from dē- (“down, away from”) and gradus (“step…
deidad
It is borrowed from Late Latin deitās (“divine nature”). Augustine formed the Latin word from deus (“god”) with the suffix -tās, after dīvīnitās (“divinity”), and used it to render Ancient Greek…
dejar
It is inherited from Old Spanish dexar, an alteration of the older lexar, which is inherited from Latin laxō (“to widen; to loosen, slacken”), a derivative of laxus (“loose, slack”). After Tailhan's…
deliberación
It is borrowed from Latin dēlīberātiō (“careful consideration, deliberation”), a learned word. Corominas lists it among the derivatives of deliberar, which he dates to the second half of the 15th…
delicioso
It is borrowed from Late Latin dēliciōsus (“delightful, delicate”), a Late Latin adjective. The Latin word is a derivative of Latin dēliciae (“delight, pleasure”) with the suffix -ōsus. Corominas…
delincuente
It is borrowed from Latin delinquens (“failing, doing wrong”), the present participle of dēlinquō (“to fail, be lacking; to commit an offence”). Corominas takes it from the Latin participle of the…
demandar
It is inherited from Old Spanish demandar, inherited from Latin dēmandō (“to entrust, hand over”). The verb is formed from Latin dē- + mandō (“to entrust, commit”), and Wiktionary analyses the…
demoler
It is borrowed from Latin dēmōlīrī (“to throw down, demolish”), a semi-learned borrowing influenced in Spanish by moler (“to grind”). The Latin verb is made of dē- and mōlior (“to labour, build…
demorar
It is borrowed from Latin dēmorārī (“to delay, linger”). The Latin verb is formed from dē- and moror (“to delay, stay”), itself from mora (“delay”). Autoridades took it as a compound of de and the…
demostrar
It is inherited from Latin dēmōnstrō (“to point out, indicate, describe”). Corominas notes that the verb sometimes has a semi-learned look, as in Nebrija's spelling demonstrar. It is formed from…
dentro
It is inherited from Late Latin deintro (“from within”), formed of Latin dē (“from”) and intrō (“inside, within”). Corominas and Gómez de Silva describe it instead as a Spanish formation from entro…
departir
It is inherited from Late Latin departiō, formed of dē- and partiō (“to divide, share out”); the DLE and Moliner give the Latin verb with an asterisk, as unattested. Corominas treats it in the…
depender
It is borrowed from Latin dēpendeō (“to hang down from; depend on”). Corominas dates it from the early 15th century, in the Cancionero de Baena, but the CDH has it in the late 14th century in the…
depósito
It is borrowed from Latin dēpositum (“something deposited”), the neuter of dēpositus, past participle of dēpōnō (“to put down, lay aside”). Corominas lists it among the learned words of the family…
derecho
It is inherited from Old Spanish derecho, inherited from Vulgar Latin dērēctus (“straight, direct”), the popular form of Latin dīrēctus, the past participle of dīrigō (“to direct”), itself formed…
desastre
It is borrowed from Old Occitan desastre (“misfortune”), a word frequent in troubadour poetry. The Occitan noun is formed on astre (“star”), in the sense of a good or evil star, with the pejorative…
descargar
It is inherited from Late Latin discarricō (“to unload”), from carricō (“to load”), from carrus (“wagon”). García de Diego finds the Late Latin verb in the glossaries, and Medieval Latin texts use…
descender
It is inherited from Old Spanish decender, borrowed from Latin dēscendō (“to come down, descend”). Corominas notes that nothing in the sound change from the Latin to the Old Spanish form betrays a…
descontento
It is formed from Spanish des- + contento. The DRAE of 2001 described it instead as the obsolete irregular participle of descontentar, and Alemany derived it from that verb; Corominas dates the…
describir
It is borrowed from Latin dēscrībō (“to copy; to draw, mark out; to describe”), a learned word that Corominas first finds at the beginning of the 15th century, in Santillana. The Latin verb is…
descriptivo
It is borrowed from Latin dēscrīptīvus (“containing a description”), a learned word. The Latin adjective is late: Lewis and Short cite it from Boethius and the rhetorician Fortunatianus. It is…