[This entry is taken from the chapter "Words about emotions in English and Spanish", of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]
This is Part 5. Go to Part 4.
Words for feelings and related words
Eng. feeling and feel
As we saw earlier, the term emotion is typically defined in dictionaries in terms of the term feeling. Thus, a dictionary may tell us
that an emotion is simply ‘a strong feeling, such as joy, anger, or sadness’
(COED) or in dictionaries that give us more senses for this word, one of them is
likely to equate emotions with feelings (cf. RHWU sense #2 above). So, let us
take a look at the word feeling now
and its Spanish equivalents.
Our word
feeling [ˈfilɪŋ]
is a noun, identical in form to the present participle of the verb
to feel in a phrase like
I am feeling sick.
The verb
feel from which the noun
feeling is ultimately derived is a
patrimonial one, attested in Old English as
felan,
whose original sense was ‘to perceive through the senses’, a sense (meaning)
that is still central to this verb, though other senses have developed through
the years, along with many idiomatic expressions, such as
feel at home,
feel like
(doing) something,
feel the need to
do something, or
feel free to do
something.
The noun feeling
is attested already in the early 13th century with the meaning ‘the capacity to
experience the sense of touch or other bodily sensations (as of heat, cold,
pain, motion, etc.)’ and, more generally, ‘physical sensation other than sight,
hearing, taste, or smell’ (OED). By the middle of the 14th century, the word
feeling was being used for ‘an affective state of consciousness, such as that
resulting from emotions, sentiments, or desires’ (AHD), as in a feeling of excitement. By the the
middle of the 15th century, it was being used to refer to what one feels about
something or one’s opinion, ‘opinion based more on emotion than on reason;
sentiment’ (AHD), as in That’s my feeling
too (cf. Sp. Eso es lo que pienso yo
también). Other senses came later, such as ‘capacity to experience the
higher emotions; sensitivity; sensibility: [e.g.] a man of feeling’ and, in the plural, ‘susceptibility to emotional
response; sensibilities: [e.g.] The
child's feelings are easily hurt’ (AHD).
As we can see, the noun feeling is quite polysemous today, with dictionaries varying in the
amount and types of senses they ascribe to the noun feeling. In addition, note that there is also an adjective feeling, as in the phrase a feeling heart, equivalent to a heart that feels. The AHD gives us
eight senses, one of which has 3 subsenses and 3 of which have 2 subsenses. The
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary gives nine senses for this noun, summarized
here, with examples:
1.
something that you feel: guilty feelings
2.
idea/belief/impression: the feeling of being followed
3.
attitude/opinion: mixed feelings
4.
emotions (as opposed to thoughts or ideas): to talk about one’s feelings
5.
emotion (strong): to speak with feeling
6.
understanding: a feeling for color
7.
sympathy/love: I have feelings for her
8.
physical sensation: I have lost feeling in my legs
9. atmosphere:
to recreate the feeling of the original
theatre
It is clear then
that when we define the term emotion
in terms of the term feeling, we
should clarify that it is only some of the senses of the word feeling that are compatible with the
word emotion, such as senses 4 and 5
in this list, not all of them.
Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary has even more
senses for this word: 11 for the noun feeling
and 3 for the adjective feeling, and Longman
Dictionary of Contemporary English has 14 for the noun and 1 for the adjective.
As usual, the most concise of all dictionaries is the Concise Oxford English
Dictionary, which gives 4 senses (with 3 additional sub-senses) for the noun
and 1 for the adjective. Curiously, the first sense and its two sub-senses are
defined in terms of emotion:
1.
an emotional state or reaction.
„
(feelings) emotional responses or tendencies to respond.
„
strong emotion.
2.
a belief or opinion.
3.
the capacity to experience the sense of touch.
„
the sensation of touching or being touched.
4.
(feeling for) a sensitivity to or intuitive
understanding of.
5.
adjective
showing emotion or sensitivity.
Here, it is sense 1
that is compatible with the main meaning of the word emotion, but none of the rest are.
Sp. sentir, sentimiento, and related words
As for the way to translate the noun feeling into Spanish, dictionaries also differ as to how they
divide the senses. Out of the blue, we may think that sentimiento is the main Spanish word to translate Eng. feeling, but things are actually not
that simple. The following is the division made in Harrap’s English-Spanish
Dictionary with a paraphrase or synonym of each sense of the word feeling in English and the most common
word to express it in Spanish.
1.
(sensation) (of cold, pain) sensación
2.
(ability to feel) sensibilidad
3.
(emotion) sentimiento
4.
(sensitivity) sensibilidad
5.
(opinion) opinion
6.
(intuition) impression
(also sensación)
As we can see, only one of the senses of Eng.
feeling translates as sentimiento according of this particular classification
of senses.
Note that for every one of these senses, the Spanish ‘equivalent’
word is not always the best way to translate that sense of the word feeling. In
other words, a translation of a phrase with a particular sense of the word feeling will not necessarily be
translated by the equivalent word given. Thus, for instance, when the Harrap’s
dictionary gives examples of a sense it doesn’t always use the given word in
the Spanish example, showing us that there may be more appropriate
translations. Thus, for the first sense of the word feeling, the ‘sensation’ one, an example given is A feeling of unease came over her, which
is translated into Spanish as La invadió
cierta inquietud, not an expression with the word sensación at all, such as sensación
de inquietud, though that longer expression could have been used as well, though
it sounds redundant. Also, for sense #3, Harrap’s translates the idiomatic
expression I know the feeling! as ¡Sé cómo te sientes!, lit. ‘I know how
you feel/are feeling’, using the verb sentir
‘to feel’ and not the derived noun sentimiento.
The Vox English-Spanish
dictionary gives 8 senses and typical one-word translations for the noun feeling, as well as some alternative
translations for English expressions containing this word. A paraphrase or
synonym of the sense of the word feeling
in question is given in parentheses.
1.
(emotion) sentimiento, emoción, pasión: feeling of guilt ≈ sentimiento de culpabilidad;
to speak with feeling ≈
hablar con pasión
2.
(sensation) sensación: a feeling of nausea ≈ una sensación de náusea
3.
(sense) sensibilidad:
I’ve lost all feeling in my legs ≈
he perdido la sensibilidad en las piernas
4.
(concern) compasión, ternura: You
have no feeling! ≈ ¡Qué
insensible eres!
5.
(impression) impresión, sensación, presentimiento: I have the feeling
that ... ≈ tengo la
impresión de que ...
6.
(artistic) sensibilidad, talento: to
play with great feeling ≈
tocar con gran sensibilidad
7.
(opinion) sentir, opinión, actitud, parecer: my own feeling is that ... ≈ en mi opinión ...
8.
(atmosphere) ambiente
As we can see, two of the most common Spanish words
to translate Eng. feeling are the
nouns sensación and sentimiento. These two words are related
to the Spanish verb sentir ‘to feel’,
a patrimonial stem-changing (e>ie)
verb whose main meaning is ‘to feel’. At least the Latin source-words of these
two nouns were related to the source-word of the source-word of the verb sentir, namely the Latin verb sĕntīre, whose main meaning
is ‘to discern by the senses; to feel, hear, see, etc.’ (L&S) (principal
parts: sĕntiō, sĕntīre, sēnsī, sēnsus). The source of this Latin verb has been reconstructed as
the Proto-Indo-European verbal root *sent‑,
which also meant ‘to feel’, so little seems to have changed in more than 5,000
years. Sp. sentir if often used to
translate Eng. feel, but note that sentir has developed a secondary sense
besides ‘to feel’, namely ‘to regret, to be sorry’, as in Siento que no vinieras ‘I’m sorry you didn’t come’ and the common
phrase Lo siento ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I
regret it’. A synonym of this sense of sentir
is lamentar. Spanish has also
converted the verb sentir into a noun
meaning something like ‘opinion, feeling’, as in the sentence Ese es mi sentir ‘that is my feeling,
how I feel, my opinion’. Note that sentir
is a transitive verb and to use it intransitively it must be conjugated
reflexively, as in Me siento enfermo
‘I feel sick’. Reflexive sentirse is
used primarily to express internal feelings and states, as opposed to those
from the outside world.
English has an unlikely cognate of Sp. sentir, namely the verb to
scent [ˈsɛnt] (originally spelled sent) that means ‘to perceive or
identify by the sense of smell’. It was borrowed from Old French sentir in the late 14th century. The
noun scent, which today is more common
than the verb scent, was derived in
English from the verb by conversion also in the late 14th century.
Let us go look first at the source-word of the cognates Sp. sentimiento ~ Eng. sentiment. English borrowed the noun sentiment [ˈsɛn.tɪ.mənt], at first spelled sentement, in the late 14th century from Old French, which itself
borrowed it from Medieval Latin. English first borrowed this noun with the
meaning ‘personal experience, one’s own feeling’ (OED), which is now obsolete. The
original meanings and spelling of this Middle English word were replaced by the
late 17th century, when it acquired the current meaning, no doubt through
French, something like ‘a mental feeling’ or ‘a thought, view, or attitude,
especially one based mainly on emotion instead of reason’, as in An anti-American sentiment swept through the
country (AHD). It was quite a popular word in the middle of the 19th
century with the meaning ‘a thought or reflection colored by or proceeding from
emotion’ (OED), though the word has lost some popularity since then.
The source-word is Medieval Latin word sĕntīmĕntum, meaning ‘feeling’
as well as ‘opinion (derived from a feeling)’. This noun was formed with the
root sĕnt‑ of the
verb sĕntīre
plus the suffix ‑mĕnt-um
that formed nouns typically with the meaning ‘instrument, medium, or result’,
as in the word monumentum, which
literally meant ‘medium of remembrance’, derived from the verb monēre ‘to remind’ (cf. Eng. monument ~ Sp. monumento).
Sp. sentimiento is
also obviously a loanword from Medieval Latin, but an early one. It is attested
already in the middle of the 13th century. This noun is not a very good friend
of its cognate Eng. sentiment, since
it typically translates into English as feeling,
with one of the senses of that English noun and not the others, as we have
seen. Some examples of the word in use are found in the collocations sentimiento de culpa(bilidad) ‘guilt(y)
feelings’, no tener sentimientos ‘to
have no feelings’, declarar los
sentimientos ‘to declare one’s feelings’, and herir los sentimientos ‘to hurt one’s feelings’. In some contexts, the
word sentimiento has the sense ‘sad
feelings’, in which case it may be translated as sorrow or grief . We find
this sense in the idiomatic expression Le
acompaño en el sentimiento, an idiomatic expression to express one’s
sympathy on someone’s passing.
Derived from the cognate nouns Sp. sentimiento ~ Eng. sentiment
are the cognate adjectives Sp. sentimental
~ Eng. sentimental. The word was
first created in English by means of the adjectival suffix ‑al in the mid-18th century, much like we
saw the adjective emotional was
derived in English from the noun emotion.
The original sense of the English word sentimental
was something like ‘deriving from feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia’
from which the sense ‘having or arousing such feelings in an exaggerated and
self-indulgent way’ derived. By 1769, the word had been borrowed by French and
it was in the Academy’s DRAE by the middle of the next century, in 1843.
Although Eng. sentimental and Sp. sentimental are close friends, the
Spanish word has developed a sense that its English cognate does not have in
expressions such as vida sentimental
‘love life’ and problemas sentimentales
‘problems in one’s love life’.
