Lat. sĭgnāre and its descendants
The Latin
noun sĭgnum
developed into a verb in Latin, namely the first conjugation, regular verb sĭgnāre, meaning
‘to mark’, ‘to seal, stamp’, as well as ‘to designate’. The English verb to
sign [ˈsaɪ̯n] is a 14th century borrowing
from Old French signer, which is a
loanword from Lat. sĭgnāre.
Spanish used to have a patrimonial verb señar, a cognate of English to sign, but it became archaic, if not
obsolete, as we shall see.
The main sense of the English verb to sign is ‘to write one’s
name on (something) for the purposes of identification or authorization’ (COED).
This verb can be used with or without an explicit direct object, e.g., I signed vs. I signed the letter. This meaning is expressed in Spanish with the verb
firmar,
which is an early, 10th century loanword from Latin firmāre ‘to affirm’, related to the semi-learned adjective
firme ‘firm, steady’.
The English verb to
sign is also used with the meanings ‘to
use sign language’ or ‘to make a sign or signs; to signal’ (AHD). The verb also
has some minor transitive senses, such as ‘to hire or engage by obtaining a signature
on a contract’, e.g. signed a new pitcher
or sign up actors for a tour (AHD). In
Table 170
below, you can see the Spanish translations of the different senses of the
English verb to sign, according to the VOX
English-Spanish dictionary.
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sign [saɪn]
transitive verb
1 (letter, document, cheque, etc) firmar
sign your name here, please firme
aquí, por favor
the two countries signed a treaty los dos países firmaron un
tratado
2 (player, group) fichar (on/up, -)
Spurs have signed a new player los Spurs han fichado
un nuevo jugador
3 (gesture) hacer una seña/señal
he
signed me to shut up me hizo una señal para que me callara
intransitive verb
1 (write name) firmar
2 (player, group) fichar
(for/with, por)
Laudrup signed for Real Madrid Laudrup
fichó por el Real Madrid
3
AMERICAN ENGLISH (use sign language) comunicarse por
señas, hablar por señas
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Table 170: Entry for the verb sign in VOX English-Spanish Dictionary
The English verb to
sign is also found in some very common
phrasal verbs (cf. Part I, Chapter 4,
§4.12.2).
The following are some of the main ones, given here with English synonyms (in parentheses)
and Spanish equivalents:
· sign in (record arrival): registrarse (al entrar),
anotarse, conectarse
· sign out (depart): registrar la salida, registrarse
al salir, desconectarse
· sign on (enlist; start transmission): firmar;
contratar, hacer firmar; abrir (una transmisión), alistarse; matricularse; etc.
· sign off (conclude, stop transmission): despedirse,
terminar la transmisión
· sign up (enlist): reclutar, contratar; alistarse,
matricularse, inscribirse, etc.
·
sign for (acknowledge receipt): firmar el recibo
As we said earlier, Spanish used to have a
patrimonial verb señar derived from
Lat. sĭgnāre,
which now is pretty much obsolete. One major Spanish dictionary, María Moliner, but not the Academy’s DLE, mentions it, and it tells us that
it is equivalent to hacer señas. As
we shall see below, Spanish does have verbs derived from señar, such as the very common enseñar
‘to show; to teach’ and the less common reseñar
‘to review; to describe’. Just like many of the senses of Sp. seña were replaced by the derived noun
señal, so many of the senses of Sp. señar,
have been replaced by the derived verb señalar
(see below).
Spanish has a learned version of Lat. sĭgnāre ‘to make a mark or
sign’, namely signar, which is very fancy and quite rare. It is still used in
the legal profession for the act of putting the notary’s seal on a document. In
the catholic religion, a reflexive version of this verb, signarse, is used for making the sign of the cross on oneself. This
use is rare in Modern Spanish, where the derived persignarse is much more common (see below).
Derived from the verb to sign we find the English
noun signature,
which came into English the 16th century from French signature, which borrowed it from Medieval Latin noun signātūra ‘sign’,
which in Classical Latin meant ‘matrix of a seal’. This Latin noun was derived from
the past-participle stem sĭgnāt‑
of the past participle sĭgnātus
of the verb sĭgnāre
(sĭgnātus: sĭgn‑āt‑us) with the derivational
suffix ‑ūr‑ which was added to passive participle stems of
verbs to derive nouns (cf. Part I, Chapter 8,
§8.6.3).
Past-participle roots typically ended in ‑t,
and so words that ended in this t plus
the Latin suffix ‑ūr‑ have given us many Latinate words in English ending
in ‑ture in English (pronounced [ʧəɹ]), such as culture, mixture, adventure, structure, picture, and so on. Most of these nouns have Spanish cognates in ‑tura (the final ‑a was a Latin feminine nominative inflectional ending).[i]
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Latin
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Spanish
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English
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sĭgn
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ā
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re
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señar
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to sign
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sĭgn
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ā
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t
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us
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|
|
|
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sĭgn
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ā
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t
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ūr
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a
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signatura
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signature
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sĭgn
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ā
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t
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ōr
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ius
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—
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signatory
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sĭgn
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ā
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t
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ār
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ius
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signatario
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signatary
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The Spanish word for signature is the semi-learned noun firma (firm-a), derived by back-formation (zero
derivation) from the verb firmar ‘to sign’
that we just mentioned. Spanish does have a cognate of Eng. signature, namely the rare, learned signatura,
which is a false friend. It is a rare word, used primarily to refer to a mark or
number in a document or a book used to facilitate its being located, something like
a catalog number or a docket number.[1]
There is another learned, noun derived from the same Latin stem
sĭgnāt‑ in
English, namely the noun signatory, meaning ‘a signer’, ‘a
party that has signed an agreement’ (COED). The word comes from the Latin
adjective signātōrĭus ‘of/related to
sealing/signing, used in sealing/signing’, used in the phrase anulus signātōrĭus ‘seal ring’ used to sign official letters in the old
day, It was formed with the agentive derivational suffix ‑ōr‑
(morphemic analysis: sign‑ā‑t‑ōr‑ĭ‑us).
English borrowed and adapted the word signatory
in the mid-17th century, first as an adjective (now obsolete) and then as
the noun we know today.
The most common way to express the meaning of signatory in Spanish is the
noun/adjective firmante, derived from
the verb firmar (see above). Spanish
does have an equivalent fancy word signatario (with an a instead of an o before the r) to refer to
the person who signs a formal document, though it is rare (more so than Eng. signatory).[2]
It would seem that Sp. signatario
came from French signataire, from an
earlier signandaire. Note that signatary has been used in English as an
alternative spelling of signatory, probably under the influence of French signataire as well. (Related to Sp. signatario are consignatario ‘trustee, mortgagee, consignee’ and resignatario, a rare religious word.)
The Spanish verb señalar is obviously derived from
the noun señal that we saw in the
preceding section. It looks like a cognate with the English verb to
signal [ˈsɪɡ.nəl], but they both
seem to have been derived independently from the cognate nouns Eng. signal ~ Sp. señal and they are not equivalent in their uses either. In other
words, these two verbs are not very good friends, despite having similar basic
meanings, for they are rarely translations of each other.
In the 19th century, English converted the noun signal to a verb (by conversion or
zero-derivation). The verb to signal
means ‘to make signals’, ‘to transmit a signal’, or to ‘instruct or indicate by
means of a signal’ (COED). The intransitive version of the verb to signal
(synonymous with to give out
a sign)
translates into Spanish primarily as hacer
señas (or hacer una seña). For the transitive sense of the
verb to signal used with automobiles, señalar
may be used, though indicar is
probably more common, e.g. He signaled he
was turning left ‘Indicó que torcía a la izquierda’.
As for the intransitive use of this sense of the verb to signal,
namely ‘to turn on the (turn) signal’, Spanish often uses poner el intermitente (lit ‘to turn on the blinkers’),
among others, but it may also use the intransitive verb señalizar. However, señalizar
means primarily to put up
signs, as in señalizar una carretera ‘to put up signs on a road’.
The verb señalizar was derived, in
Spanish, out of the noun señal and
the verb-forming suffix ‑izar,
equivalent and cognate of Eng. ‑ize
(cf. Part I, Chapter 5,
§5.6.2.1).
Sp. señalizar is a very recent verb,
since it first appeared in the DLE in
1970.
As for the meaning of Sp.
señalar, it doesn’t seem to ever translate as Eng. to signal, but rather as to
indicate, to point out, to point at, and to show or to mark, as in
La flecha señalaba la salida ‘The
arrow pointed to the exit’, El reloj
señalaba las ocho ‘The clock showed twelve’, La caida le señaló la cara ‘The fall left a mark on his face’ (= La caída le dejó la cara señalada).
[1] The DLE defines Sp. signatura as ‘señal de números y letras que se pone a un libro o a
un documento para indicar su colocación dentro de una biblioteca o un archivo’.
[2] Note
that the ending of the Spanish word is ‑ario,
a descendant of Lat. ‑arius (just
like Eng. ‑ary), whereas the ending
of the English word is ‑ory, a
descendant of Lat. ‑ōrius (just like Sp. ‑orio).
[i] The following 67 words are
the most common words in ‑ture in
English: acupuncture, admixture,
adventure, agriculture, aperture, apiculture, aquaculture, architecture,
capture, caricature, conjecture, creature, culture, curvature, denture,
departure, expenditure, feature, fixture, fracture, furniture, future, gesture,
horticulture, immature, indenture, infrastructure, investiture, juncture,
lecture, legislature, literature, manufacture, mature, miniature, mixture, moisture,
musculature, nature, nomenclature, nurture, overture, pasture, picture,
posture, premature, puncture, rapture, restructure, rupture, scripture,
sculpture, signature, stature, stricture, structure, suture, tablature,
temperature, texture, tincture, torture, vasculature, venture, viniculture,
viticulture, and vulture.
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