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Sp. matrimonio ~ Eng. matrimony
The Latin word mātrĭmōnĭum
has given us the cognates Eng. matrimony
[ˈmæ.tʰɹɪ.ˌmoʊ̯.ni] ~ Sp. matrimonio [ma.tɾi.ˈmo.ni̯o]. The descendants, just
like the original source-word, refer to the state or social institution of being
married or, in other words, marriage or wedlock. Sp. matrimonio is a loanword
from Latin, attested first in the 14th century. Eng. matrimony came from the Anglo-Norman version of Old French,
variously spelled matermoine, matremoine, matrimoigne, matrimone, or
matrimonie (OED), also a Latin
loanword, first attested in English in the 14th century. Curiously, the Old French source-word,
attested in the 12th century, did not mean what these words mean today or what
they meant in Latin, but was rather the analog of the descendant of patrimonium, namely ‘property inherited
from one’s mother’ (OED).
As we mentioned earlier, Latin mātrĭmōnĭum is derived from the root mātr‑ of the word māter
‘mother’ (mātr‑ĭ‑mōn‑ĭ‑um,
the first ‑ĭ‑ was a linking vowel). Thus, Lat. mātrĭmōnĭum is totally
analogous to the source of Eng. patrimony,
Lat. pātrĭmōnĭum,
but its meaning is quite unexpectedly different. How could that be? How did a
word with the root meaning ‘mother’ came to mean ‘marriage’? Our best guess as
to how mātrĭmōnĭum
came to mean ‘marriage’ is that it originally meant what its parts indicate,
namely something like ‘motherhood’ (‘the state of being a mother’) and that
there must have been an expression that described marriage as ‘the leading by a
man of a woman into motherhood’. In other words, originally mātrĭmōnĭum meant
‘marriage’, but only for the woman in a patriarchal society. Eventually,
however, the word came to signify ‘marriage’ for both spouses, losing the
original connection to motherhood.
The cognates Eng. matrimony
~ Sp. matrimonio are close friends
since their meanings are probably identical in the abstract. However, the two
words are not used the same way, if for no other reason that English has
another word that means ‘marriage’, namely marriage,
a 12th century loanword from Old French (mariage
in Old French and Middle English). This noun was derived in French from the
verb marier ‘to marry’, which was
also borrowed into English as (to) marry.
The equivalent of this verb in Spanish is casarse,
a verb derived from the noun casa
‘house, home’. (The verb casar thus originally
meant something like ‘to set up a separate home (for the married couple)’.) And
although there is a noun casamiento
derived from this verb, it is rarely equivalent to English marriage, but rather typically refers to the act of marrying and is
thus equivalent to Eng. wedding.
Spanish matrimonio
sometimes translates into English as matrimony,
but this is a very rare word in English, a fancy synonym of marriage, the most common translation of
Sp. matrimonio, as in the set phrases unidos
en matrimonio ‘united in marriage’, matrimonio civil ‘civil marriage’, matrimonio mixto ‘mixed marriage’, contraer matrimonio (a fancy way to say) ‘to get married’ (cf. casarse), matrimonio consensuado ‘common-law marriage’, matrimonio de conveniencia ‘marriage of convenience’, consumar el matrimonio ‘to consummate
the marriage’, proponer matrimonio ‘to
pop the question’, proposición/propuesta
de matrimonio ‘marriage proposal’, and matrimonio
gay ‘gay marriage’.
Sp. matrimonio can
be used to refer to a married couple as well, a synonym of pareja (de casados), as in el
matrimonio García ‘Mr. and Mrs. García’, as in Vamos a salir esta noche con otro
matrimonio ‘we are going out tonight with
another (married) couple’, or as in Son
un matrimonio muy bien avenido ‘They get along well as a married couple’. Finally,
on some countries of South America, the word matrimonio can be used as equivalent of boda ‘wedding’.
By the way, the English words marry [ˈmæ.ɹi] and marriage
[ˈmæ.ɹɪʤ] are not related to the word matrimony. As we just saw, Eng. marriage
comes from Old French mariage (pronounced
[ma.ˈʀjaʒ] in Modern French),
which is derived from the verb marier,
which means ‘to marry’ and is the source of Eng. marry. French mariage seems
to have been derived in French by means of the suffix ‑age that descends from
the Late Latin suffix ‑aticum (cf.
Part II, Chapter 18).
(The age ending was often Latinized
in medieval Latin writing as ‑agium
and thus we find the word mariagium ‘dowry’
in 12th century Latin writings.) Spanish also borrowed or calqued this French
word, as maridaje, as well as the verb
maridar, but this happened rather
late, in the 17th century, and these words did not really take hold, though they are
still found in the dictionary with rather specialized meanings.
The French verb marier
‘to marry’ descends patrimonially from the Latin verb marītāre ‘to wed, marry, give in marriage’. (Note that marier was transitive, just like Sp. casar, and the meaning ‘to get married’
was rendered by the verb’s reflexive conjugation, infinitive: se marier, cf. Sp. casarse.) The Latin verb maritāre
comes from marītus, which as
an adjective meant ‘marital, matrimonial, conjugal’, but which as a noun meant ‘husband,
married man’. It is, after all, derived from the noun mās meaning ‘male’ (cf. Eng. masculine, Sp. macho, etc.). The patrimonial descendant of marītus in Spanish is marido,
also meaning ‘husband’.
Since marido
‘husband’ comes from a Latin word derived from the word for ‘male’, this
explains why there is no word *marida
in Spanish for ‘wife’. The word for ‘wife’ in Spanish is either esposa, a patrimonial word that comes
from Lat. spōnsa
‘promised’ (cf. Eng. spouse, a French
loan) or with the patrimonial word mujer.
The word for ‘wife’ in Latin was uxor,
which has not left a descendant in Spanish (or in English). It seems that in Vulgar
Latin mŭlĭer
(nominative) ‘woman’ came to be used both for ‘wife’ as well as for ‘woman’ (whether
married or not) and that usage has been maintained in Spanish, so that the descendant
of Lat. mŭlĭer
in Spanish, namely mujer, means both ‘woman’
and ‘wife’. The original word for ‘woman’ in Latin was fēmina (accusative fēminam),
from where Spanish gets the patrimonial word hembra ‘female’, which suffered several sound changes (cf. Part I,
Chapter 10).
Latin mŭlĭer
is of obscure etymology, though some think it comes from the same root as mŏllis meaning ‘soft’.[1]
Finally, we should add that just like there was a derived
adjective patrimonial for the noun patrimonio/patrimony, there is also a
derived adjective matrimonial derived
from the noun matrimonio/matrimony. These
adjectives can be seen as containing the derivational suffix ‑al attached to the word’s stem, after
removing the inflection ‑o in the
case of Spanish. The two cognate adjectives are identical in the spelling, matrimonial, if not its pronunciation,
cf. Eng. [ˌmætɹəˈmoʊ̯niə̯l] vs. Sp. [matɾimoˈni̯al]. These words are loanwords from classical Lat. mātrĭmōnĭālis ‘of or
relating to marriage’ (mātr‑ĭ‑mōn‑ĭ‑āl‑is).
Eng. matrimonial is first attested in
the 15th century, as a loanword from French, which borrowed the word from Latin
in the 14th century. Sp. matrimonial is
also first attested in the 15th century and it is very likely that it also came
through French.
The dictionary defines Eng. matrimonial as ‘of or relating to marriage, the married state, or
married persons’ (MWC) but it is obvious that this is a rather fancy word and that
it is much less common than Sp. matrimonial,
a difference in usage that is analogous to the difference that exists between the
nouns Eng. matrimony and Sp. matrimonio. That is because the Eng. matrimonial has several synonyms that
are more common, such as first of all marital,
another fancy words that also means ‘relating to marriage or the relations
between husband and wife’ (COED) and that is found in just a few expressions, but
also because the adjective married
(derived from the past participle of the verb marry) and even the noun marriage
can be used as alternatives as modifiers. Thus, Sp. problemas matrimoniales
translates into English as marital
problems, vida matrimonial as married life, and agencia matrimonial and acta
matrimonial as marriage agency (or
bureau) and marriage certificate. There are also other common collocations in
Spanish with this adjective that translate by means of very different words in
English, such as cama matrimonial
‘double bed’, and compromiso matrimonial ‘engagement’.
[1] The traditional formula for marrying a heterosexual couple in Spanish
is Ahora los/os declaro marido y mujer ‘I now pronounce
you husband and wife’. In some dialects of Spanish, women may to some extent refer
to their husbands as mi hombre ‘my man’, but marido is the more common and standard term.
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