Eng. universe ~ Sp. universo
Two more very important words contain the root that we are
studying here, namely universe and university, and their Spanish cognates,
namely universo and universidad. These words are derived
from the Latin nouns ūnivĕrsum ‘the whole (world)’ and ūnĭvĕrsĭtās ‘the
whole (entirety)’.
Both of these nouns go back to the Latin adjective ūnĭvĕrsus, which meant ‘all together,
all in one, whole, taken collectively’, and its feminine nominative wordform
was ūnĭvĕrsa and the neuter ūnĭvĕrsum, e.g. universa provincia Babylonis
‘the whole land of Babylon’. This adjective was a compound formed with the root
ūn‑ of the numeral ūnus ‘one’ and the participle vĕrsus ‘turned’ that we have seen in this chapter,
with the linking vowel ‑ĭ‑ added in between (ūn‑ĭ‑vĕrs‑us). Thus, this adjective meant literally ‘turned (into) one’. From this
adjective, the adverb ūnĭversē was
derived which meant ‘in general, generally’. The phrase in ūnivĕrsum had the same meaning as the adverb.
Lat. ūnĭvĕrsus is equivalent to Ancient Greek κᾰθολῐκός (katholikós) which
also meant ‘general, universal’. From this Greek word come the cognates Eng. Catholic and Sp. católico. This Ancient Greek word was borrowed into Late Latin as catholicus and became part of the name
of the (Christian) Catholic Church, which aspired to be universally applicable
to all of humanity, and hence the name (cf. Lat. Ecclesia Catholica; Sp. Iglesia
Católica). Gk. κᾰθολῐκός (katholikós) is formed from the adverb κᾰθόλου (kathólou) ‘on the
whole, in general; etc.’ and the adjectival suffix ‑ῐκ‑ός (‑ik‑ós). The adverb κᾰθόλου is formed by the prefix κατά (katá)
‘downwards, etc.’ (also an intensive prefix) (cf. catalog, catapult, cataract, catastrophe, etc.), and ὅλου (hólou),
genitive wordform of the adjective ὅλος (hólos)
‘whole, all’, a cognate of the patrimonial English word whole.
From the neuter form
of the Latin adjective ūnivĕrsum, a converted (zero-derived) noun was derived
in Latin meaning ‘the whole world, the universe, all people, everybody’. Also,
from the plural masculine form ūniversī
was used with the meaning ‘the whole body of citizens, all men together’. Eng. universe [ˈju.nə.vəɹs] seems to have been borrowed from both
French and Latin by different authors at different times, not just once. It
first appeared in the late 16th century with the meaning ‘the whole world,
cosmos, the totality of existing things’. The noun is attested earlier in the
century in Old French as univers, a
loanword from Lat. ūnivĕrsum, though it was used earlier in the phrase en univers, calqued from the Latin
phrase in ūnivĕrsum, and the now obsolete adjective univers meaning ‘whole’ from Lat. ūnivĕrsus is attested already in the 13th century.
According to Corominas, Sp. universo shows up in Spanish a century earlier than in French, in
the first half of the 15th century, in 1438 to be exact, in a book titled El Corbacho o Reprobación del amor mundano,
a misogynistic invective against earthly love and lust by Alfonso Martínez de
Toledo, archpriest of Talavera de la Reina (Toledo). Also from the same period are
Catalan univers and Portuguese universo. The earliest attested word
that comes from this Latin word in the modern languages is Italian universo, from the early 14th century.
Eng. universal ~ Sp. universal
Lat. ūnĭvĕrsus was an adjective but perhaps because the noun ūnĭvĕrsum was derived from it without any additional morphemes, at a later date,
in the post-Augustan period, Latin derived an adjective from the noun ūnivĕrsum by means of the third declension adjectival suffix ‑āl‑, namely ūniversālis (ūnivers‑āl‑is),
meaning ‘of or belonging to all’. This adjective was borrowed into English and
Spanish as universal in both cases, since
Latin adjectives in ‑āl‑ always lost the inflectional endings
in patrimonial Spanish and French words and hence they did in words borrowed
from Latin as well, by analogy. In English, universal
is pronounced [ˌju.nə.ˈvɜɹ.səl] and in Spanish [u.ni.βeɾ.ˈsal].
Although in Latin, the stress of adjectives in ‑āl‑ went on this suffix’s
vowel, like in Spanish, in English, the stress was retracted to the preceding
one. The primary meaning of this word in both languages is ‘relating to
or done by all people or things in the world or in a particular group’, ‘applicable
to all cases’ (COED).
The adjective universal
is attested in English even before the noun universe,
namely in the late 14th century. It was a borrowing from French universel, a loanword from Latin, first
attested in the 13th century. In Spanish, universal
first appears in the same source as the noun universe, namely in the 15th century.
Both English and Spanish, along with French, have derived
other words from the basic noun Eng. universe
~ Sp. universe. One of them is
ver verb Eng. universalize ~ Sp. universalizar, meaning ‘to make
universal; generalize’ (AHD), cf. Fr. universaliser.
It is not clear in which of these three languages the verb appeared first,
though it seems it may have been in English, in the middle of the 17th century.
The suffix ‑ism‑
has also been added to the adjective universal
to produce relatively uncommon words that mean primarily ‘the fact or condition
of being universal in character or scope’ (SOED). The term has been used in
philosophy and theology to refer to the belief in ideas of universal applicability.
In English, however, universalism also
came to refer to ‘a [Christian] theological doctrine that all human beings will
eventually be saved’ (MWC) that appeared in the late 18th century in the US. In
the Spanish world, universalismo has
been used to refer to a political doctrine that defends the unification of
states. Related to these nouns, as usual, are the adjectives Eng. universalist ~ Sp. universalista.
Eng. university ~ Sp. universidad
Finally, let us look at the cognates
Eng. university ~ Sp. universidad. They are words that started
to be used in the Middle Ages in Europe to refer to institutions of higher
learning, where by the way, all teaching and learning was done in Latin, the
universal language of the time for theology, politics, and education. Eventually,
these institutions developed into the modern university, which is
an
institution of higher education, usually comprising a college of liberal arts and sciences and graduate and professional schools and having the authority to confer degrees in various fields of study. A university differs from a college in that it is usually larger, has a broader curriculum, and offers graduate and professional degrees in addition to undergraduate degrees. (Encyclopædia Britannica)[i]
The first Western European
university arose in Bologna (Italy) in the late 11th century, the second one in
Paris (France) in the mid-12th century, and the third one in Oxford (England)
in the late-12th century. In Spain, the universities of Palencia and Salamanca
date from at least the early 13th century. The University of Salamanca’s claim
to fame is that it was the first one to be officially called a university, by
royal decree, in 1253.
Figure 110: Meeting of doctors at the University of Paris (14th-century manuscript)[ii]
The universities at
both Paris and Oxford were composed of colleges, which were at the time basically
residence halls for scholars. The word college,
and its false-friend cognate Sp. colegio,
come from Lat. collēgĭum, a noun that
referred primarily to ‘persons united by the same office or calling, or living
by some common rules, a college, guild, corporation, society, union, company,
fraternity’ (L&S). The word college
in Modern English means primarily ‘an institution of higher learning that
grants the bachelor's degree in liberal arts or science or both’ (AHD) whereas
the term university refers to ‘an
institution for higher learning with teaching and research facilities
constituting a graduate school and professional schools that award master’s
degrees and doctorates and an undergraduate division that awards bachelor's
degrees’ (AHD). In the Spanish-speaking world, it is rare for an institution of
higher learning not to grant all advanced degrees, including master’s degrees
and doctorates, so a distinction is not usually made between a college and a
university. In Spanish, they are all called universidad.
Thus, the equivalent of going to college
in Spanish is ir a la universidad.
The concept of a university that does not grant post-baccalaureate degrees
(master’s and doctorates) has been referred to in Spanish as colegio universitario before, though
this term is quite rare. (For more on the cognates Eng. college ~ Sp. colegio,
see §8.4.5.4 below.)
The words university and universidad words are derived from the Latin term ūnĭvĕrsĭtās
‘the whole’, or more accurately from its accusative wordform ūnĭvĕrsĭtātem.
This word is formed, in Latin, from the stem ūnĭvers‑ that we have seen and the noun-forming derivational suffix
‑tās (regular morpheme: ‑tāt‑)
plus the linking vowel ‑ĭ‑.
This suffix was added to adjectives (or sometimes nouns) to form abstract third
declension feminine nouns indicating a state or condition. The reason that the
accusative form of this word was used is that patrimonial Latin words with the
suffix ‑ĭtās descended into Spanish
and French through their accusative wordform, which in this case ended in ‑ĭ‑tāt‑em,
an ending that in patrimonial words changed to ‑edad and in learned words to ‑idad in Spanish and to ‑ité
in French (English ‑ity comes from
Fr. ‑ité). When additional words with
this suffix were borrowed from Latin later on, the original ending in the Latin
word was replaced with the patrimonial suffix we just saw.
So, how did
universities get their name? The Latin word ūnĭvĕrsĭtās, which originally just meant ‘the whole’, came to be used for ‘a
number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community,
guild, corporation’ (L&S), a meaning similar to the one Lat. collēgĭum had (see §8.4.5.4 below). So, when these new centers of learning were created, which
were nothing more than guilds or corporations of teachers and of students, they
were called, in Latin, ūnĭvĕrsĭtās magĭstrōrum ‘guild of teachers’, ūnĭvĕrsĭtās
schŏlārĭum ‘guild of students’ or,
putting the two together, ūnĭvĕrsĭtās magĭstrōrum et schŏlārĭum ‘guild of teachers and
students’. It was a matter of time before these terms were reduced to universitas, a term which was then
adapted to the local languages by changing its ending to the ending Latin words
ending in ‑itas typically took,
namely ‑ity in English and ‑idad in Spanish, giving us Eng. university and Sp. universidad.
The model of the
European university has spread to the whole world but universities have also
changed much in recent times. The focus of learning has shifted in the last 200
years from learning Latin and the seven liberal arts—grammar,
logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music—that
resulted in students then joining one of the three professional
faculties, namely medicine, law, and theology. Nowadays, a university is simply
‘an educational institution at the highest level, where you study for a degree’
(DOCE). More specifically, in the English-speaking world, universities confer post-graduate
degrees and thus contrast with colleges, so one dictionary defines the word university as ‘an institution for higher
learning with teaching and research facilities constituting a graduate school
and professional schools that award master’s degrees and doctorates and an
undergraduate division that awards bachelor’s degrees’ (AHD). Other dictionaries
emphasize the fact that research is done at these institutions, e.g. ‘a
high-level educational institution in which students study for degrees and
academic research is done’ (COED).
Excursus: Eng. college ~ Sp. colegio
In the preceding
section we mentioned cognates Eng. college
~ Sp. colegio. These two words are
typically false friends since Eng. college
is typically a type of universidad in
Spanish and Sp. colegio typically
refers to private primary school. Actually, the situation is a bit more
complicated.
In Spanish, the
word colegio used to have the same
meaning as college did in English originally
since it was used to refer to a community of people who lived in the same
residence hall, which was destined for the study of sciences, arts, or trades
under some kind of authority and rules. Nowadays, however, Sp. colegio has come to refer primarily to
an elementary and sometimes secondary school, though this word is more common
in some countries than others and it competes with the word escuela, especially when talking about
public schools as opposed to private ones. (Note that in Britain, the word public school refers to private schools.) Also, the meaning of the word colegio varies somewhat from place to
place and from time to time. Today, for example, colegio is not used in Spain anymore for the equivalent of high
school, for which instituto is
preferred.
The Latin word collēgĭum was also used in Medieval
times to refer to societies or corporations of people in the same profession or
trade. Sp. colegio is still used with
that meaning in a number of expressions such as colegio de abogados, equivalent to bar association in English, and colegio
médico, equivalent to doctors’ associations in the English-speaking world.
In the Catholic Church, the terms colegio
de los obispos or colegio episcopal
are used to refer to collection of bishops who run the Catholic Church. This is
one case in which the English word college has retained its old meaning since
such a bishop group is referred to in English as college of bishops. In English too, the word college has retained in a number of expressions this archaic
meaning, namely ‘an organized group of professional people with particular
aims, duties, and privileges’ (COED). Thus, in the US, it is used in the term electoral college, which is ‘a body of
electors chosen to elect the President and Vice President of the United States’
(AHD).
The Latin word collēgĭum was derived in Latin from the
stem collēg‑ of the noun collēga ‘partner in judgeship or other
office, colleague’ and the suffix ‑ĭ‑um,
a suffix used to derive abstract nouns, sometimes denoting offices and groups of
people (collēg‑ĭ‑um). (The noun-forming
suffix ‑ĭ‑um is
derived by conversion from the neuter form of the first-second declension
adjectival suffix ‑ĭ‑us/‑ĭ‑a/‑ĭ‑um.) As for the Latin noun collēga, it is the source of Eng. colleague [ˈkɒ.liɡ]
and Sp. colega [ko.ˈle.ɣa].
It contains the prefix con‑ ‘with,
together’ and the root lēg‑ of the verb lēgāre, which meant primarily ‘to send with a commission, send as
ambassador, depute, commission, despatch’ and ‘to bequeath, leave by will’.
This verb is derived from the regular root lēg‑ of the noun lēx
(genitive: lēgis; regular root: lēg‑)
‘a formal motion for a law’, which is the source of the cognates Eng. law and Sp. ley ‘law’.[1] The fact that people in a collēgĭum followed the same rules and
laws may be another reason for the meaning this word took in Medieval Latin,
namely that of ‘residence of scholars’.[2]
Eng. colleague and Sp. colega have very similar meanings, at least in theory, since they
both refer to ‘a person with whom one works in a profession or business’
(COED). In practice, however, they
are not used in exactly the same way. Spanish colega is used almost exclusively among people in the liberal
professions (Sp. profesiones liberales),
much more so that Eng. colleague is,
which can be used to refer to an person that one works with. (A liberal
profession is ‘an occupation that needs a high level of education and training’,
such as doctors and lawyers.) On the other hand, Sp. colega is also used in some dialects of Spanish in colloquial slang
with the sense ‘buddy, companion, comrade, pal’.
There are a few
other interesting words derived from the stem collēg‑ĭ‑ of Lat. collēgĭum.
From this word, Latin derived the adjective collēgĭālis
with the adjectival suffix ‑āl‑
(collēg‑ĭ‑āl‑is) that meant first of
all just ‘of a collegium
(guild/fraternity/board)’, but which acquired additional meanings through time.
Eng. collegial, pronounced [kə.ˈli.ʤɪ.əɫ]
or [kə.ˈli.ʤəɫ],
is a mid-14th century loanword from French. Its main meaning today is probably
‘marked by camaraderie among colleagues’ (MWC), though it has other senses,
such as ‘relating to or involving shared responsibility’ (COED). The first of
these meanings translates into Spanish as de
colegas or de compañeros and the
second one as colegiado (see below).
The cognate of Eng.
collegial in Spanish is colegial, a false friend, for this is an
adjective of the noun colegio ‘primary
and secondary school’, and thus it means ‘of a colegio, related to a colegio’.
In addition, colegial has been turned
into a noun in Spanish with the meaning ‘schoolboy, a child that attends a colegio’, which is the most common
meaning of this word today. The feminine form is either colegial or colegiala
‘schoogirl’. Also derived from colegio
is the noun colegiatura can be used
to refer to an admission or scholarship in a school in some dialects of Spanish
(beca o plaza de colegial, MM),
though in Mexico, it means ‘school fees’.
English derived the
noun collegiality from the adjective collegial in the late 19th century,
which now means primarily ‘cooperative interaction among colleagues’ (RHWU),
though it is also used with the sense ‘shared power and authority vested among
colleagues’ (AHD). The former meaning translates into Spanish as camaradería or compañerismo. Spanish has a cognate of the noun collegiality, namely colegialidad, which is used with the
meaning ‘quality of an association that is organized as a colegio or a corporation’ (DLE).
Another word
derived from collēgĭum in Latin was collēgĭātus, which is formed with the
suffix ‑ātus (fem. ‑āta), which in addition to
being the regular passive participle ending of first conjugation verbs, could
also be used to form adjectives from nouns indicating the possession of a thing
or a quality. From such adjectives, nouns could also be derived. That is what
happened with Lat. collēgĭātus which
came to mean ‘member of a collēgĭum (society,
college, corporation)’.
The descendants of
Lat. collēgĭātus are Eng. collegiate and Sp. colegiado, but their meanings are very different. Eng. collegiate is an adjective that means ‘relating
to college or a college’ (DOCE) and thus translates as universitario in Spanish, e.g. collegiate
sports (Sp. deportes universitarios;
intercollegiate
= interuniversitario). Sp. colegiado (fem. colegiada) is, first of all, an adjective that means ‘constituted
as a colegio (society, college,
corporation)’. Additionally, it can be a noun that refers to a person who is a
member of a colegio in the
professional, not school sense. Most commonly this word is used in soccer,
where it means ‘a referee who is a member of an official referee association (colegio de árbitros)’.
Sp. colegiado can also be the past
participle of a verb colegiar(se)
that Spanish has developed out of the noun colegio.
This verb means simply ‘to form a professional colegio’ and ‘to become an official member of a professional colegio’. From the past participle colegiado of this verb comes the
adjectival sense of this word, ‘that has joined a professional colegio’, as in médico colegiado ‘a doctor who is a member of the professional
association of physicians’. A tribunal
colegiado is a court of justice containing three or more judges.
[1] There are many words derived from this Latin verb, starting with Sp. legar ‘to bequeath, hand down, pass
down’ and from it, Sp. legado (cf. Eng.
legacy), and the cognates Sp. delegar ~ Eng. delegate, Sp. relegar ~
Eng. relegate, and Sp. alegar !~ Eng. allege (the ! indicates that they are false friends).
[2] By the way, the word collēgĭum is formed on the same pattern con‑X‑ĭum that produced convīvĭum ‘a meal in company, a banquet, a feast’, formed with the
root vīv‑ of the verb vīvĕre ‘to live’ (source of Sp. vivir). Literally, it means ‘a living
together, a co-living’. Another word formed on this patter is condominĭum ‘co-ownership, owning
together’, from condŏmĭnus ‘co-owner’, from dŏmĭnus ‘master, possessor, ruler, lord, proprietor, owner’ or the
verb dŏmĭnāre ‘to rule, control,
dominate’. Lat. dŏmĭnus meant ‘the
Lord’ in Christianity and it is also the source of patrimonial Sp. dueño ‘owner’. All of these words are
derived from the word dŏmo ‘house’.
Eng. condominium [ˌkɒn.də.ˈmɪn.ɪ.əm] was borrowed from Latin in the early
18th century with the meaning ‘joint rule or sovereignty’. It acquired the
meaing ‘privately owned apartment’ in American English in 1962 and it was soon
abbreviated to condo [ˈkɑn.doʊ̯]. This use of the word translates into Spanish
as piso or apartamento. In politics, the word condominium in English means ‘the joint control of a state's
affairs by other states’ (COED) and this sense of the word does translate as condominio in Spanish.
[ii] Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meeting_of_doctors_at_the_university_of_Paris.jpg.
A meeting of doctors at the university of Paris. From the "Chants
royaux" manuscript, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Accessed: 2017.11.11
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