[This entry is taken from a chapter 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
Sp. probar and Eng.
prove
As we have seen, the Spanish verb probar and the
related noun prueba are the main ways to translate the English verb test
and the related noun test, respectively, so let us take a look at these
two related words. In this section, we look at the verb probar and in
the following one, at the noun prueba.
As we mentioned in the preceding section, the Spanish verb probar,
which is a cognate of Eng. prove, is quite polysemous. Both Sp. probar
and Eng. prove descend ultimately from Lat. prŏbāre, a verb that was rare
in Classical Latin, not being found in Caesar or Cicero for instance, but which
took off in later times and was very frequent in Ecclesiastical (Church) Latin
during the Middle Ages, for instance. Its principal parts were prŏbo, prŏbāre,
prŏbāvi, prŏbātus (cf. Part I, Chapter 8). As for its meaning polysemous
verb with several (related) meanings (senses) and usages not all of which have survived
in the verb’s reflexes in the modern languages. This verb had at least the following
senses (from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary):
- ‘to try, test, examine, inspect, judge’
- ‘to esteem as good, serviceable, fit, just,
etc.; to be satisfied with, to approve’
- ‘to represent or show a thing to be good,
serviceable, fit, right, etc., to make acceptable, to recommend’, ‘to make a
thing credible, to show, prove, demonstrate’
The verb
prŏbāre was derived from the Latin adjective
prŏbus/a
that meant ‘good, proper, serviceable, excellent, superior, able’ and which was
often used with moral connotations and thus can also mean ‘upright, honest,
honorable, excellent, virtuous, etc.’ (L&S). This adjective has been
borrowed into Spanish in recent times as
probo/a with the meaning
‘honest, reputable, upright’, the morality sense of the Latin source word or etymon,
though it is rather formal and rare. It was first added to the Academy’s dictionary
(DRAE) in 1852. The Latin adjective
prŏbus/a has been reconstructed as coming from
Proto-Indo-European *
probʰwo- ‘being in front’, from the prefix *
pro‑
(extended form of
per‑) ‘forward’ and the root *
bʰuH‑ ‘to be’.
Actually, the Latin abstract noun derived from the adjective
prŏbus, namely
prŏbĭtātem (nominative wordform:
prŏbĭtas; prŏb‑ĭ‑tāt‑em) appears to have
been borrowed into Spanish even before the adjective, as probidad, since
it is found in the DRAE already in 1803 as a synonym of honradez
‘honesty’. Interestingly, this noun was also borrowed in English, in the early
15th century, as probity [ˈpʰɹoʊ̯bəɾi], with the meaning ‘honesty and decency’, according to
one dictionary (COED), or ‘adherence to the highest principles and ideals :
uprightness’ according to another (MWC).
The Spanish verb probar, on the other hand, is a
patrimonial word, descended by word of mouth from spoken (Vulgar) Latin and it
is found already in early writings such as the Cid (circa 1200), for instance
(cf. Part I, Chapter 1 and 9). Reflexes of this Latin verb are also found in
other western Romance languages: Catalan provar, Portuguese provar (Port.
[pɾu.ˈvaɾ] or Br. [pɾo.ˈva(ʁ)]), French prouver ([pʁu.ˈve]), Italian provare ([pɾo.ˈva.ɾɛ]). The verb has also been
borrowed by other non-Romance European languages, e.g. English probe and
prove (see below), Dutch proberen and proeven, German probieren,
proben, and prüfen, Hungarian próbál, and Irish promh.
Sp. probar is a stem-changing verb, that is, one in
which the root vowel ‑o‑ changes to ‑ue‑ whenever it is stressed,
as in the present tense form pruebo ‘I try/test/taste, etc.’ (but not probemos
‘we try/test/taste, etc.’, since in this form the ‑o‑ is not stressed).
That is because a stressed short Latin ‑ŏ‑ always changed to ‑ue‑ in Old Spanish in
patrimonial words (cf. Part I, Chapter 10). As for the spelling, this verb used
to be spelled with the letter 〈v〉 in Old Spanish, as provar,
much like in most other Romance languages, but the spelling was changed to a 〈b〉 under the influence of the written Latin etymon. (Both letters,
of course, are pronounced identically in Spanish, cf. Part I, Chapter 7.)
The change of the letter
〈b
〉 in Latin
words to
〈v
〉 in the descendants of those words
in Spanish and French (and thus in English) was a common one in these languages
in intervocalic position (between vowels), as in the case of Lat.
prŏbāre. Intervocalic
〈b
〉 changed its sound in these languages to the same sound that Latin
〈v〉 changed to, which explains why this letter was chosen to represent the new sound.
The sound that Latin 〈v〉 and intervocalic 〈b〉 changed to was somewhat different
in French and Spanish, namely [v] in the former and [β] in the latter. Also, in
Spanish, but not in French the new sound [β] and the old sound [b] (of non-intervocalic
〈b〉) eventually fully merged into a single sound (phoneme), one with two contextually
determined variants (allophones): [b] and [β]. Later on, Spanish, but not French,
changed the spelling of words so that they would have the same letter, 〈b〉 or 〈v〉
that a word’s etymon (source word) had in Latin, e.g. Lat. prŏbāre and tabĕrna
became French taverne and prouver, but Modern Spanish taberna and
probar (cf. Part I, Chapters 7 and 10).
As we said earlier, in Modern Spanish, probar
is a polysemous word, one with more than one meaning or use (senses). There
seem to be at least four major senses for this word:
(1) the
prove/demonstrate sense, used with theories and claims, which
translates into English as to prove, e.g. No probaron que ella
estuviera allí ‘They didn’t prove that she was there’
(2) the
‘put to the test’ sense, which can be translated mostly as to test or
to try (out), as in Probaron el arma ‘They tried/tested the
weapon’. There may be more specialized translations, such as when probar
is used with actors and thus would translate as to audition, as in Probaron
a cinco actores ese día ‘They tested five actors that day’.
Another subsense (or
perhaps a separate sense) is when probar is used with articles of
clothing, which translates as to try on, e.g. Se probó el vestido
‘She tried on the dress’ (reflexive) or Le probó el vestido a la niña
‘She tried the dress on the girl’ (non-reflexive)
(3) the
‘taste’ or ‘try’ sense used with food or drink, as in
No probamos el pescado
‘We didn’t try/taste the fish’ (in some contexts, other translations may be
more appropriate, as in
No pruebo el vino ‘I never drink wine’)
(4) the
‘try doing’ sense, used with complement verbs, as in probar a, e.g. Prueba
a llamarle otra vez ‘Try calling him again’
As we mentioned earlier, the English verb prove
[ˈpʰɹuv] is a cognate of Sp. probar.
They are only ‘partial friends’, however, since only some of their meanings
coincide, as we have seen, but not all. (We say that two cognates are false
friends when none of their meanings
coincide, ‘partial friends’ when only some of them do, and ‘good friends’ when their
meanings and uses are very similar, cf. Part I, Chapter 1.)
Eng. prove is an early 13th century loan from the Anglo-Norman
(a dialect of Old French brought to England) reflex (descendant) of this Latin verb,
which was spelled either prover or pruver at the time (cf. Modern
French prouver [pʀuˈve]).
From very early on, this English verb was used with different senses: ‘to show,
demonstrate (first half of the 12th cent.), to establish as true (c1130), (used
reflexively) to show oneself to be, to turn out to be (c1170), to show oneself
to be able (c1170), (of a thing) to be evidence (1197), to be (in a particular
condition) (c1285), to prove in court (c1292), to test (end of the 13th cent.,
apparently originally Anglo-Norman)’ (OED). All of these senses are found in
Old Spanish provar and most of them are also found in Modern Spanish probar.
As we saw above, Sp. probar is only sometimes equivalent
to Eng. prove, meaning that these cognates are only partial friends. The
same thing is true the other way around. Engl. prove only sometimes translates
as probar, since only some of these words’ senses coincide. The following are the
main senses of Eng. prove and their Spanish translations (there are a few
other, rare senses of Eng. prove, such as a legal sense and one used in cooking):
(1) the
‘give proof’ sense: this can be translated as probar, though demostrar
is a very common alternative, more so than its English cognate demonstrate,
e.g. They proved that she was guilty = Sp. Probaron/demostraron que ella
era culpable
(2) the
‘turn out’ sense: this translates as resultar, e.g. She proved to be right
= Sp. Resultó tener razón; when prove is followed by an adjective, Spanish
typically ads a verb, e.g. It proved (to be) useful = Sp. Resultó
(ser) útil (Collins)
(3) the
reflexive ‘demonstrate’ sense: this always translates as demostrar, e.g.
He has proved himself worthy of our trust = Sp. Ha demostrado ser
digno de nuestra confianza (Collins)
Finally, let us mention that there are words that
are closely related to the cognate verbs Eng. prove ~ Sp. probar,
such as the nouns Eng. proof ~ Sp. prueba, which come from
Medieval Latin noun prŏba,
which we will explore in the next section. Another related word is the English
adjective provable, a 14th century loan from Old Fr. provable,
which derived it from the verb. Eng. provable translates into Spanish as
demostrable, verificable, and comprobable, even though
Spanish has a cognate of provable, namely probable ‘probable’,
which has a different meaning, as we will see in section §1.7.6
below.
So, let us next look in detail at the nouns that derive from
the Medieval Latin noun
prŏba
derived from the verb
prŏbāre, namely Eng. proof and probe
and Sp. prueba. Finally, in the last section of this chapter, we
will look at other English and Spanish words that ultimately derive from Latin
words that contained the very same root
prŏb‑, words
that have the root prob‑ or prov‑.
Go to Part 6
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