[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 20 of Slaves and Slavery: Go to Part 1
Other English and Spanish words related to slavery
Eng. emancipation ~ Sp. emancipación
As we saw in the preceding section, although English and Spanish
have borrowed the words Eng. manumission ~ Sp. manumisión that refer
to the freeing of slaves, these words are today used mainly with a historical context
of the Romans’ freeing of their slaves. The words used for freeing of slaves in
the modern world in English and Spanish are the cognates Eng. emancipation
~ Sp. emancipación, which descend from Latin ēmancĭpātĭōnem, a action noun derived
from the verb ēmancĭpāre that meant ‘to emancipate’, that is, ‘to put out
of the hand and power of the paterfamilias; to declare free and independent,
to emancipate a son from the patria potestas by the thrice-repeated act of
mancipatio and manumissio’ or, more generally, ‘to give from under
one’s own power or authority into that of another’ (L&S). This word also
had a derived wider sense, namely ‘to give from under one's own power or
authority into that of another’ (L&S) and, ‘beyond the juridical sphere, to
give up, surrender, sell’ (L&S). Latin did not use this verb to refer to the
freeing of slaves, but rather the freeing of a wife or, usually, a child from the
legal authority of the pater familias, a Latin phrase that means the male
guardian of a family. In Spanish, it was common at least until very recently to
use the concept padre de familia, a clone of Lat. pater familias,
to refer to the male head of a family, and it still uses the term emancipación,
and the related verb emanciparse, for the leaving by young people of their
parents’ home.
English borrowed the noun emancipation from the Latin
word through French émancipation in the middle of the 17th century. Fr. émancipation
is already attested in the early 14th century (LGR) and it was first borrowed to
refer to the Roman ‘action or process of setting children free from the patria
potestas’ (OED). However, by the late 18th century, Eng. emancipation,
just like its French and Spanish cognates, was being used to refer to ‘the action
or process of setting free or delivering from slavery; and hence, generally, from
restraints imposed by superior physical force or legal obligation; liberation’,
which is the sense that is most common today (OED).[1]
The word emancipation in English was also used in the cause of religious
toleration in the 17th century, the anti-slavery cause in the 18th century, and
in the women’s liberation cause in the 19th century. In addition, the canon law
of the Roman Catholic Church has other senses for the term emancipation,
such as ‘release from ecclesiastical obedience’.[i]
In English, the noun emancipation is often heard in the
phrase Emancipation Proclamation, which refers to ‘the announcement made
by President Lincoln on 22 September 1862 [during the US Civil War] emancipating
all black slaves in states still engaged in rebellion against the Federal Union’
(OD).[ii]
The same source goes on to say that ‘although implementation was strictly beyond
Lincoln’s powers, the declaration turned the war into a crusade against slavery’
(OD).
Figure 8: Abraham Lincoln Writing the Emancipation Proclamation, by David Gilmour Blythe (1863)[iii]
As we said, the Latin noun ēmancĭpātĭōnem (nominative: ēmancĭpātĭo), is derived from the
verb ēmancĭpāre (earlier ēmancŭpāre). As we have seen in so many
other occasions, such as when we described the word manumission, it was
formed by adding the action noun suffix ‑ĭōn‑ to the passive
participle stem of the verb, in this case ēmancĭpāt‑. The principal parts
of the Latin verb ēmancĭpāre (earlier ēmancŭpāre) were present
tense ēmancĭpo, present infinitive ēmancĭpāre, perfect ēmancĭpāvī,
and passive participle ēmancĭpātus.
|
ēmancĭpāre |
< |
ē-man-cĭp-ā-(re) |
|
ēmancĭpātus |
< |
ē-man-cĭp-āt-(us) |
|
ēmancĭpātĭōnem |
< |
ē-man-cĭp-āt-ĭōn-(em) |
The verb ēmancĭpāre was derived by means of the
variant ē‑ of the
prefix ex‑ ‘out’ from the verb mancĭpāre ‘to transfer, sell’, a verb
derived from the noun manceps (genitive: mancĭp‑is) ‘one who takes formal
possession, a legal purchaser’, ‘a purchaser by lifting the hand, buyer at auction’,
etc. (CTL). This noun itself was ultimately derived from a compound verb containing
the root man‑ of the noun manus ‘hand’, followed by cep‑s which
meant something like ‘taker’, since it is derived from the verb capĕre ‘to take, capture, etc.’
(cf. the cognate verbs Eng. capture ~ Sp. capturar, derived from
this verb’s root). Spanish has borrowed Lat. mancĭpāre as mancipar
‘to make someone a slave’, a synonym of exclavizar, though it is a rare word.
English borrowed the verb emancipate in the 17th century
from the passive participle form ēmancĭpātus of the Latin verb ēmancĭpāre.
The French cognate of this verb, émanciper, is already attested in the 14th
century and no doubt influenced the borrowing of the English word, even if English
used the Latin verb’s passive participle as the source for this word, not the
present infinitive. Sp. emancipar is attested quite early too, in 1260 (Partidas,
cf. DCEH), and it is obviously a learned word (a loanword from classical, written
Latin; Sp. cultismo), not an inherited or popular one (Sp. patrimonial).
The main meaning of both of these verbs is ‘to free from bondage,
oppression, or restraint; liberate’, but a secondary legal meaning in both languages
is ‘to release (a child) from the control of parents or a guardian’ (AHD).[2]
In Spanish, more common than the transitive form emancipar is the intransitive
pronominal form emanciparse, which translates as ‘to become emancipated’
when referring to a child or a wife, or ‘to gain independence’, when referring to
a colony. Sp. emanciparse is also used in ways which do not typically translate
into English by means of the verb emancipate, as in Las mujeres se han
emancipado mucho ‘Women have become a great deal more liberated’ (OSD) or (synonym
of independizarse) Difícilmente encontrará un trabajo que le permita emanciparse
económicamente ‘He will not easily find a job that allows him to become economically
independent’ (DUEAE).
Sp. mancebo/a
There is another Latin word that was related to the verb mancĭpāre
that we saw earlier, and thus to the noun manceps and to the verb ēmancĭpāre, namely the
noun mancĭpĭum (earlier mancŭpĭum). This noun meant first of all ‘a
possession, property, right of ownership’, but also, by extension, ‘a slave obtained
by legal transfer’ (CTL).[3]
In other words, Lat. mancĭpĭum was yet another word for ‘slave’ in Latin,
besides sĕrvus.
The noun mancĭpĭum was derived from the stem mancĭp‑ of the verb ēmancĭpāre by means of the
suffix ‑ĭ‑(um) that
we have seen before in this chapter (cf. §1.8.7
about sĕrvĭtĭum) that derived second declension neuter nouns (man‑cĭp‑ĭ‑um)
Interestingly, the word mancĭpĭum has been inherited patrimonially
by Spanish, resulting in the now somewhat archaic patrimonial noun mancebo
‘youth, young man’. In the earliest attestations of this word, its meaning is
clearly ‘slave’ or ‘servant’ (equivalent to criado, see above), but Berceo
was already using in in the 13th century with the sense of ‘young man’,
equivalent to joven and muchacho (DCEH). Actually, Sp. mancebo
derives from the Hispanic Vulgar Latin version *mancĭpus of Lat. mancĭpĭum,
presumably derived from the phrase homo mancĭpīi
(DCEH). This *mancĭpus
had penultimate stress, presumably by influence of mancĭpĭum (DLE),
which has stress on the first (antepenultimate) ‑ĭ‑ because the penultimate syllable (the second ‑ĭ‑) is light (cf. Part I,
Chapter 8).
Sp. mancebo has a feminine form manceba, which
was derived in Spanish at some point from the masculine word. Some dictionaries
give these words separate entries, however, for a manceba is not just a
female version of a mancebo. Rather, manceba developed a separate
and pejorative sense, namely that of ‘concubine’. Larousse defines manceba
clearly (and only) that way, as ‘concubine, woman who lives with a man without
being married’ (GDLEL).[4]
María Moliner’s dictionary gives the same, single definition.
One dictionary that presents both words in the same entry is the academies’ DLE (earlier versions in the DRAE do too), though curiously there is also an entry manceba that all it does is refer us to the entry mancebo -ba. This dictionary gives six senses for this lexeme. Three of them apply to both the masculine and the feminine wordforms, though they are all rare (poco usado) and in one case, the feminine use is even rarer (in this use, the word is said to be primarily an adjective that can also be used as a noun). Finally, the sixth sense, which strangely enough we are not told is little used, is only feminine and thus refers only to women, which is the ‘concubine’ sense. Actually, the DLE defines this sense by means of the adjective amancebado/a ‘living together’ derived from the verb amancebarse ‘to cohabit, live together [without being married]’ (AEIV), which is itself derived from the noun mancebo/a (a‑manceb‑ar‑se).[5] Note that this verb, which appears already in Nebrija’s dictionary (1495), is only conjugated reflexively and, thus, there is no verb *amancebar, only amancebarse. The action noun derived from this verb is amancebamiento.
It is fair to say that all of these words, the noun mancebo/a,
the verb amancebarse and the adjective amancebado/a, sound more
than a bit archaic or historical today. Curiously, none of the major dictionaries
seem to alert us of this fact, as the probably should. Also, because of this,
it is fair to say that many Spanish speakers are not familiar with these words,
though most educated speakers obviously are.
[1] The
Latin term patria potestas, lit. ‘paternal power’, refers to ‘the power of
the head of a Roman family over his wife, children, agnatic descendants, slaves,
and freedmen including originally the right to punish by death and always embracing
complete control over the limited personal and private rights and duties of all
members of the family’ (Webster’s New Third International Unabridged Dictionary).
The equivalent term in Spanish is patria potestad, a well-known and
common term in the language. It is a legal term equivalent to the Roman one
that refers to the legal authority that parents have over unemancipated
children (‘autoridad que según la ley tienen los padres sobre los hijos no emancipados’,
Gran Diccionario de la Lengua Española Larousse).
[2] The DLE
defines emancipar as ‘Libertar de la patria potestad, de la tutela o de la
servidumbre’ (DLE).
[3] The
concept of mancipium in Roman law refers to ‘the status of a freeman subject
to the power and control of the head of a Roman family similar to that of a slave
except that he could not be abused or killed without legal cause’ and ‘the power
or control so exercised by such head of family over such freeman’, as well as ‘a
form of quiritarian as opposed to bonitarian ownership of property common in early
Roman law’ (Merriam-Webster).
[4] Original:
‘manceba. sustantivo femenino. Concubina, mujer que vive con un
hombre sin estar casados. SINÓNIMO barragana’ (GDLEL).
[5]
Original: ‘mancebo, ba. … 6. f. Mujer que vive amancebada’ (DLE).
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