By the addition of the preposition/prefix prae ‘before’ to the verb sĕdēre, Latin
created the verb praesĭdēre (prae+sĕd+ē‑re).
Its principal parts were praesĭdĕo, praesĭdēre, praesēdi/praesīdi, with
no supine/passive participle form. As expected, the literal meaning of this
verb was ‘to sit before or in front of’ (L&S), but additional, derived
meanings were ‘to (stand) guard, watch, protect, defend’ and ‘to preside over,
manage, superintend, direct, command’ (CTL).
This verb has given us the cognates Eng. preside
[pɹɪ.ˈzaɪ̯d] ~ Sp. presidir [pɾe.si.ˈd̪iɾ]. Both verbs have the same general meaning ‘be in a
position of authority in a meeting, court, etc.’ (COED) though, as we shall
see, they are not used in the exact same way. Eng. preside is an intransitive verb which can be used by itself, as in Lucy always presides (at the meetings).
If what is being presided over is mentioned, it is encoded in a prepositional
phrase with the preposition over,
such as in Lucy always presides over the
meetings. The verb preside is more
likely to be used when speaking of leading a court session, a ceremony, or a
formal event, than a simple meeting, for instance. For the latter the verb to chair is more likely to be used.
Spanish presidir,
on the other hand, is a transitive verb, so that what is presided over is a
direct object, as in Lucy siempre preside
las reuniones ‘Lucy always presides over the meetings’. Additionally, Spanish
does not have verb equivalent to Eng. to
chair, so that Sp. presidir can
be the equivalent of the English verb to
chair, used for less formal meetings, such as committee meetings, as well
as of the English verb to preside,
used for more formal meetings, just as juries and courts of law.
Additionally, Sp. presidir
can be used in ways that Eng. preside
cannot, namely with non-human subjects. One such meaning of presidir is ‘to occupy the most
important place in a room’, which can be said of portraits, for instance, as in
Un retrato del fundador de la fábrica
preside el despacho del director ‘A portrait of the factory’s founder
dominates/looms over the director’s office’ (Clave). Related to that sense of
Sp. presidir, is ‘to have great
influence or power’ or ‘to prevail’, one that is synonymous of predominar ‘to be predominant’, as in La tristeza presidió la velada ‘Sadness
prevailed/loomed over the whole evening’ (DUMM).
These additional uses of Sp. presidir with non-human subjects seem to be connected to the fact
that presidir in Spanish does not
entail doing anything, the way preside
does in English, and it is more about occupying a place of honor. Thus, whereas
English dictionaries typically say that to preside
is ‘to be in control’, which suggests active participantion on the part of the
person who presides, Spanish dictionaries say that presidir is ‘to have the first or most important position’, which
suggests a rather passive role. This interpretation of what presiding (presidir) means in Spanish explains the
extension of the verb presidir to
meanings in which the ‘presider’ is not a person and whose participation is not
an active one, as is the case with the English cognate verb.
Although some dictionaries say that Eng. preside comes from Latin, such as Merriam-Webster's
Collegiate and Longman DOCE, there is no doubt that English borrowed the verb preside from French présider in the early 17th century, a verb that French itself
borrowed from Latin in the late 14th century. Sp. presidir also makes its first appearance in the 17th century and
there is little doubt that it came in through French too. Note that as in the
case of other derivates of Lat. sĕdēre
in Spanish, here too, the Spanish verb is a third conjugation ‑ir verb, and not an ‑er verb, as we would have expected a
loan from a second conjugation Latin ‑ēre to be (or a first
conjugation verb as it is in French).[1]
More common than the descendants of the Latin verb praesĭdēre are the descendants of this
verb’s present participle Latin praesĭdēns,
a verbal adjective that meant ‘that sits before or in front of’ and ‘that guards,
watches, protects, defens’ (prae‑sĭd‑ē‑ns;
genitive: praesĭdĕntis;
regular stem: prae‑sĭd‑ĕ‑nt‑).
Already in Latin this participle could be used as a noun, by conversion, with
the meaning ‘ruler, governor, leader, etc.’. From the accusative wordform of
this noun, praesĭdĕntem,
come the cognates Eng. president and
Sp. presidente.
Eng. president
came into the language through French in the late 14th century, at first with
the meanings of ‘the appointed governor or lieutenant of a province, or
division of a country, a dependency, colony, city, etc.’ and ‘the head of a
religious house or of a college of priests; also of a hospital’ (OED).
Additional senses were added to the word president
through time. The sense ‘the officer in whom the executive power is vested in a
modern republic, the elected head of the government’ was first used in the
United States upon the creation of the country in the 18th century. The word president is not used the same way in
all dialects of English, however. In the U.S., president is ‘the title of one who presides over the proceedings of
a financial, commercial, or industrial company, as a bank, railway, mining
company, commercial trust, etc.’, a person who in Great Britain would be called
a chairman (and in the Bank of
England and some other banks, governor)
(OED). In Spanish too, presidente is
equivalent of Eng. president when
referring to the leader of a state or a society, but director/a is more common when referring to the leader of a bank or
a corporation.
Descendants of Latin participles in English and Spanish
often perform a double duty as adjectives and nouns, such as the cognates Eng. resident ~ Sp. residente (see next section), both of which have an adjectival use,
meaning ‘that resides’, as in the phrase resident
alien, and a noun use, meaning ‘one who resides’, as in a resident. In the case of Eng. president ~ Sp. presidente, the descendants of Lat. praesĭdēns, we find that these words are both just nouns,
not adjectives. Another peculiarity of Sp. presidente
is that it is one of the few nouns in ‑nte
(‑ante/‑ente), that is, words derived from Latin present participles, that
has a feminine form in ‑nta, namely presidenta ‘woman/female president’ (cf.
Part I, Chapter 8,
§8.4.3.5.3.3).
Latin regularly derived abstract nouns from adjective stems
by means of the suffix ‑ĭ‑a
and, in particular it did this from present participle stems which, as we have
seen, were adjectives in Latin. Such nouns referred to the action of the verb
or some such related aspect of it. Thus, from Latin present participle stems,
which ended in the suffix ‑nt‑, we
get nouns ending in ‑nt‑ĭ‑a.
For example, from the stem praesĭdĕnt‑
(prae‑sĭd‑ĕ‑nt‑)
of the present participle praesĭdēns,
Latin could have formed the noun praesĭdĕntĭa
(prae‑sĭd‑ĕ‑nt‑ + ‑ĭ‑a →
praesĭdĕntĭa).
There is no sign that Classical Latin ever did derive this word, but it is found
in Medieval Latin and from there it passed on to French as presidence and from there to English in the late 16th century.
Because the Latin ‑nt‑ĭ‑a ending had changed to ‑nce in French patrimonial words, that is also the ending that
French gave to the borrowed word praesĭdĕntĭa
and that is also the ending that the English word presidence has. All English words that end in ‑nce have this same source in Parisian French. However, in English
words that came from Anglo-Norman, as opposed to Parisian French, the Latin
suffix ‑nt‑ĭ‑a had
changed to ‑ncy, for example pregnancy from pregnant and obstinacy
from obstinate. For some reason, right
around the same time that the noun presidence
was borrowed into English from French, English created a doublet of this word
with that alternate ‑ncy ending,
namely presidency. The former member of
the doublet has primarily the meaning ‘the action or fact of presiding’ (WNTIU)
whereas the latter means ‘the office or status of president’ (COED). In Spanish
there is only one word, presidencia,
that is equivalent to both words. The ending ‑cia given to this Latin borrowing is the ending that Latin words ending
in ‑t‑ĭ‑a had traditionally
adopted.
|
Latin
(accusative)
|
‑ă‑nt‑em, ‑ĕ‑nt‑em
|
‑ă‑nt‑ĭ‑a, ‑ĕ‑nt‑ĭ‑a
|
|
|
Spanish
|
‑ante, ‑ente
|
‑ancia, ‑encia
|
|
|
English
|
‑ant, ‑ent
|
(1) ‑ance, ‑ence
|
(2) ‑ancy, ‑ency
|
Moving on to other words derived from the verb praesĭdēre, we find the Latin third
declension noun praesĕs,
whose genitive form was praesĭdis.
Thus, its regular stem was prae‑sĭd‑,
just like the verb. As an adjective, praesĕs
meant ‘presiding, protecting, guarding, defending’ and, derived from it, as a
noun, meant ‘protector, guard, guardian, defender’ (CTL). This word has been
borrowed into English as preses or praeses (or præses), but it is quite rare. Its
meaning is ‘the president or chairman of a meeting’, equivalent to chairman, especially in Scotland, and in
a university setting, it can mean ‘academic moderator’ (OED).
From the stem praesĭd‑
of this word, another noun was derived in Latin by means of the suffix ‑ĭ‑um,
namely praesĭdĭum
(nominative and accusative: prae‑sĭd‑ĭ‑um;
genitive: prae‑sĭd‑ĭ‑ī; regular stem: prae‑sĭd‑ĭ‑),
which meant ‘defence, protection,
guardianship, help, aid, assistance’, ‘guard, escort, convoy’, and ‘garrison’.
This word has given us the false-friend cognates Sp. presidio and Eng. presidium
and presidio.
Modern Sp. presidio
translates into English as prison or penitentiary. That is not
what the word presidio meant in the 16th century, however, when this
word first entered Spanish. Then it meant ‘military garrison attached to a town
or city’, especially those located in North Africa (Morocco), where prisoners
who committed serious crimes were often sent, but also in the Americas. The presidios
were fortresses or fortifications (Sp. fortaleza) in the Roman style.
Interestingly, English
has borrowed the word presidio from Spanish to refer to Spanish garrisons
in the Americas. Eng. presidio means ‘a garrison, especially a fortress
of the kind established in the southwest United States by the Spanish to
protect their holdings and missions’ (AHD), as in The presidio of Rio Grande
is situated on that river (OED, 1808). There are numerous presidios in the United
States, including thirteen in Florida, six in Texas, and five in California. The
presidio in San Francisco, for example, is known as the Presidio Real de San
Francisco. It was founded in 1776 and it is now part of the Golden Gate
National Recreation Area in San Francisco.
The word presidio
is archaic in Spanish, however. The regular words for prison are prisión,
cárcel, or penal, though penitenciaría (cognate of Eng. penitenciary)
of is also used as a fancy synonym. (More common than the noun penitenciaría
is the adjective penitenciario/a, which is used as the adjective for prisión,
as in the phrase reforma penitenciaria ‘prison reform’.) From the noun presidio
(presidi‑o) the noun presidiario/a was derived by means of the Spanish
agent suffix ‑ario/a. This derived noun means ‘convict, inmate, prisoner’
(presidi‑ari‑o/a). Derived from it is the term expresidiario ‘ex-convict,
former inmate’.[2]
The other English word derived from Latin praesĭdĭum is the
word presidium. Its meaning is ‘any
of various permanent executive committees in Communist countries having power
to act for a larger governing body’ (AHD). That is because the word presidium came into English in the 20th
century from Russian прези́диум (prezídium), where it had that meaning.
Russian, of course, borrowed this word from Latin praesidium.
[1] French borrowed second conjugation Lat. praesĭdēre as presider,
with the ‑er infinitival ending
characteristic of first conjugation patriomonial French verbs. In patrimonial
French words, the four Latin infinitive endings, ‑āre, ‑ēre, ‑ĕre, and ‑īre changed to ‑er, ‑oir, ‑re, and ‑ir, respectively.
[2] This suffix comes
from the Latin suffix ‑ārĭ‑, which had two uses in Latin, just like its
Spanish descendant. It could form first-second conjugation adjectives from
nouns and numerals (masc. ārĭ‑us, fem. ārĭ‑a, neut.
ārĭ‑um). It could also to derive nouns denoting an agent from
other nouns, which is how it is used here.
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