[This entry is taken from a chapter of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]
[Go to Part 1 of Words about sex and gender]
Eng. sex ~ Sp. sexo
The English noun sex has several meanings or senses, as you can tell by looking in any dictionary. The number of senses varies depending on which dictionary you use, but most agree that there are three major senses, two having to do with the male/female distinction—the state or being one or the other sex, and each one of the groups of people in each group—and one having to do with sexual activity, as in the expression to have sex. Dictionaries differ somewhat as to how they group the senses, with some grouping the first two senses just mentioned as subsenses of a single one, whereas others keep them separate. Some dictionaries add an additional sense, namely the ‘genitals’ sense. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD) adds this as a separate sense whereas the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COED) makes it a subsense of the ‘sexual activity’ sense. Other dictionaries do not mention this sense, however. Curiously, the AHD is alone among major dictionaries in that it mentions yet a fifth sense for the noun sex, namely ‘one’s identity as either female or male’, a topic that we will discuss later when we look at the word gender. We include below the (abridged) entry from the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary (CALD) because of the richness of the examples it provides for each of the 3 senses it recognizes.
|
sex [seks] noun MALE OR FEMALE • What sex is
your cat? • Some tests
enable you to find out the sex of your baby before it’s born. • It’s illegal
to discriminate against people on the basis of (their) sex. • She accused
her employer of sex discrimination (= of treating her unfairly because
she was a woman). 2. countable all males
considered as a group, or all females considered as a group • She seems to
regard all members of the male sex as inferior. • Members of
the opposite sex are not allowed in students’ rooms overnight. ACTIVITY • Sex before/outside
marriage is strongly disapproved of in some cultures. • She was complaining
about all the sex and violence on television. • She’d been
having sex with a colleague at work for years. • Most young
people now receive sex education at school. • extramarital/premarital
sex • casual
sex (= sex with someone you do not know) • unprotected
sex (= sex without using something to prevent disease or becoming pregnant) |
Table 1:
Entry for sex in the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary 3e (2008)
The connection between the biological categories (male/female)
and the sexual activity is of course understandable, though the fact that the
same word is used for both things is a fact about the English language, one
which is shared to some extent with Spanish, but not a necessary connection.
Note, for instance, that although the noun sex is found in the most
common phrase for ‘sexual activity’ and ‘sexual intercourse’ in English,
namely, to have sex, that is not the case with this word’s Spanish
cognate sexo, where the phrase tener sexo is a calque from
English and only found in varieties of Spanish most influenced by English. The expression
relación sexual is probably more common in standard Spanish for this sense.
So, for example, the expression extramarital sex translates is
not normally translated as sexo extramatrimonial but as relación
sexual extramatrimonial as shown in the Granada University English-Spanish
Dictionary (GUESD).
Actually, Spanish dictionaries do include the ‘sexual activity’
sense for Sp. sexo, though this sense is clearly quite recent and still
not as widespread in use as that of its English cognate sex. It is the
third sense (of three) in María Moliner’s dictionary entry for sexo,
with the curious definition ‘set of practices aimed at obtaining sexual pleasure’,[1]
and it is the fourth sense (of four) in the Academies’ (DLE) dictionary entry,
which in the latest edition is defined as ‘sexual activity’ (‘actividad sexual’),
but which in the earlier edition it was defined as ‘venereal pleasure’ (‘placer
venéreo’). In both cases the same example was used: Está obsesionado con el sexo
‘He is obsessed with sex’, which is quite possibly a calque from English. The
other senses of Sp. sexo are, according to these dictionaries, the
already mentioned ones for English sex, namely ‘the state of belonging
to each biological group’, ‘the grouping of each biological group’, and ‘the
(external) sexual organs of each group’.
The cognates Eng. sex ~ Sp. sexo are both
loanwords from Latin, for this word did not pass on to Spanish through
patrimonial (uninterrupted, oral) descent (cf. Part I, Chapter 1). The Latin
noun was sexus in the nominative singular wordform, sexūs in the
genitive wordform, and sexum in the accusative singular wordform. It was
a fourth declension noun, a minor declension whose nominative wordform ending in
the inflection ‑us makes it look deceptively like a second declension masculine
noun (cf. Part I, Chapter 8).
This noun has been reconstructed as *séksus also in
Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the language source of Latin (and thus of Spanish), as
well as English and many other languages (cf. Part I, Chapter 3). It is derived
from the PIE verbal root *sek‑ that meant ‘to cut, cut off, sever’, so
that we infer that the original meaning of the noun was something like ‘section,
division’, which came to specialize into a meaning like ‘division into male and
female’. The PIE verbal root *sek‑ is found also in the Latin verb secāre
‘to cut, cut off; to cleave, divide; etc.’, the source of patrimonial Spanish
(and Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, and Occitan) segar ‘to harvest, mow,
reap’ (and of French scier ‘to saw, to cut with a saw’),
The Latin noun sexus does not seem to have
patrimonial descendants (by uninterrupted oral transmission) in most modern
Romance languages, other than perhaps the word sessu in Sardinian and
Sicilian that means ‘female genitalia’, and šešo with the same meaning
in Judeo-Spanish (DCEH). In all other Romance languages, the cognates of Eng. sex
are loans from written, classical Latin, just like in English.
The English word sex [ˈsɛks]
was borrowed, first in writing, by different authors either directly from
written Latin or from French sexe, which was itself a loanword from
Latin. French sexe (earlier sex) appears in writing as early as
the year 1200, first with the meaning ‘genital organs’ (or ‘the genitals’,
OED). By the end of the 13th century, the meaning had extended to ‘set of organic
characteristics that allow us to distinguish the male and the female’ (CNRTL).[i]
Other senses were added to this French word over the centuries, including ‘sexuality’
by the middle of the 19th century. The same thing happened with this French
word’s English and Spanish cognates, due to the influence these languages have
always had on each other. Historically, the most influential of the three languages
has been French, of course, and in recent times, English.
English sex is first attested in the late 14th
century. The meaning ‘sexual activity’ for Eng. sex is not attested
until much later, in the 19th century, as with its French cognate. The meaning
‘sexuality, physical lovemaking, eroticism’, most frequently found in the phrase
to have sex (with), is only from the second quarter of the 20th century,
according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). As we saw earlier, the
‘sexual activity’ sense of this word’s Spanish cognate sexo is not as developed
as in English. In French too, this sense for the word sexe seems to have been influenced
by English. Note, forexample, that the expression to have sex (with)
translates into French as avoir des rapports (sexuels) (avec), lit. ‘to
have (sexual) relations (with)’ and not as avoir sexe, much like in Spanish
(see above).
The Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e
hispánico (DCEH) tells us that the first known written attestation of the
word sexo in Spanish is found in the works of the Marqués de Santillana
in the first half of the 15th century. The original meaning of this word also
had to do with the genitals and, in particular, it was used as a euphemism for
the female genitals (cf. Sp. vulva), just as in the Italian
dialects and in Judeo-Spanish, as we saw above. DCEH tells us that the sense
‘female genitals’ for this word, is found all the way back in classical authors
of Antiquity, such as first century author Pliny or the early Christian author Lactantius
(c. 250-325).
It is commonly accepted that sexed entities, be they plants
or animals, can be categorically divided into two groups or sexes: male and
female. Technically, a male is ‘an individual that produces small usually
motile gametes (as spermatozoa or spermatozoids) which fertilize the eggs of a
female’ (MWD) and a female ‘bears young or produces eggs’ (MWD). In humans,
males have an XY chromosome pair and in females an XX pair. Biologically,
things can be a bit more complicated, however. Thus, in humans we find
chromosome disorders, such as individuals with Sex Chromosome Trisomy (SCT),
such as XXY or XYY chromosomes. We also find an even larger percentage of males
and females with a minority sexual orientation, namely attracted
sexually to same-sex individuals, though that is another matter, one that does not
concern us here.
Before leaving the the word sex we should mention
some other lexemes that have been derived from it. Let us start with the verb to
sex that English has developed from the noun sex. This verb was
created in the late 19th century with the meaning ‘to determine the sex of (an organism)’
(AHD). This verb has been cloned into Spanish as sexar, a very rare and technical
verb, much like its English source, which is no doubt not known by most
speakers of Spanish. The more common alternatives are Sp. determinar el sexo
de, equivalent to the English expression to determine the sex of (Collins).[2]
In the middle of the 20th century, the noun sex was turned into another
verb by the addition of the adverbial particle up, resulting in the verb
to sex up, whose meanings are either ‘to arouse sexually’ or ‘to increase
the appeal or attractiveness of’ (AHD). Most English-Spanish dictionaries do
not translate the informal sex up. Collins does give a translation for
the second sense of this verb, namely hacer más atractivo, lit. ‘to make
more attractive’.
Even more recent, from 2007 according to the OED, is the creation,
in English of the verb to sext a transitive/intransitive verb that means
‘to send (a person) a sexually explicit or suggestive message or image
electronically, typically using a mobile phone; to send or exchange (sexually
suggestive or explicit content) in this way’ (OED). The verb is a blend of the words
sex and (to) text (cf. Part I, Chapter 5,
§5.10.2).
More common than the verb to sext is the noun sexting derived from
it, first attested in 2005 according to the OED, which refers to ‘the action or
practice of sending or exchanging sexually explicit or suggestive messages or
images electronically, esp. using a mobile phone’ (OED). The Collins English-Spanish
Dictionary tells us that this verb and noun have been cloned into Spanish as
sextear and sexteo.[ii]
Finally, let us mention a few common expressions,
whether idiomatic or collocations (cf. Part I, Chapter 4,
§4.11),
that contain the words Eng. sex and Sp. sexo. Many of these
expressions are very similar in both languages, typically because Spanish has
cloned them from English (cf. Chapter 4,
§4.8.2).
The following is a selection of idiomatic expressions or collocations
containing the noun sex from Collins’ English-Spanish dictionary. Most
of the time the English noun sex translates into Spanish as the noun sexo,
except when it is used as a modifier in a noun-noun compound (cf. Part I,
Chapter 5), when it is translated by the adjective sexual. In some fixed
(idiomatic) expressions, Eng. sex is translated by another word, such as
the adjective erótico/a.
- the
sex act – el acto sexual
- sex
addict – adicto/adicta al sexo
- sex
addiction – adicción al sexo
- sex
aid – juguete erótico
- sex
appeal – atractivo sexual
- sex buddy (informal) – follamigo/follamiga
- sex
change – cambio de sexo
- sex crime (= criminality) – delitos sexuales, etc.
- sex discrimination – discriminación por cuestión de sexo
- sex
drive – libido/libido/apetito sexual
- sex
education – educación sexual
- sex
game – juego erótico
- sex
hormone – hormona sexual
- sex
life – vida sexual
- sex machine (humorous) – máquina de hacer el amor/bestia en la cama
- sex
maniac – maníaco (maníaca) sexual
- sex
object – objeto sexual
- sex
offender – delincuente sexual
- sex
organ – órgano sexual
- sex partner – compañero/compañera (de cama), pareja
- sex
shop – sex-shop
- sex
tape – video sexual
- sex
therapist – sexólogo/sexóloga, terapeuta sexual
- sex
therapy – terapia sexual
- sex
tourism – turismo sexual
- sex
toy – juguete erótico
- sex
video – video sexual
- sex
worker – trabajador/trabajadora del sexo
- casual
sex – relaciones sexuales promiscuas
- anal
sex – sexo anal
- casual
sex – relaciones sexuales promiscuas
- non-consensual
sex – relaciones sexuales no consentidas
- extramarital
sex – relación sexual fuera del matrimonio ; relación sexual extramatrimonial
- to
have sex – tener relaciones sexuales (with con)
Obviously,
this is not a complete list of expressions with the noun sex in English.
So, for example, the colloquial expression kinky sex is not found in
this or many other English-Spanish dictionaries. One online dictionary that
does provide a translation for Eng. kinky sex is the online SpanishDict,
which gives us two alternatives, shown in Table 2, none of which can be said to be
widespread, well-known, or standard. Another translation of kinky sex
one sometimes hears is sexo pervertido, lit. ‘perverted sex’.
|
kinky sex PHRASE 1. (colloquial) (general) a. el sexo fetichista (m) Some like conventional
sex, and others like kinky sex. b. el sexo atrevido (m) His girlfriend seems innocent, but I heard she is into kinky sex. - Mind your
own business! |
Table 2: Entry for kinki sex in online SpanishDict[iii]
[1]
Original: ‘conjunto de
prácticas encaminadas a obtener el placer sexual’ (MM).
[2] The DLE
gives two senses for sexar. The original one is like the first English
one, of which it is clear a clone (‘tr. Determinar o precisar el sexo de
un animal’). The DLE also mentions a second meaning for the verb sexar,
used in Honduras, namely ‘to have sexual relations’ (‘intr. Hond.
Tener relaciones sexuales.’). In the previous edition of the Academy’s
dictionary (DRAE), only the latter of these two meanings is mentioned.
[i] Original: ‘ensemble des caractères
organiques permettant de distinguer le mâle et la femelle’, https://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/sexe
[ii] Cf. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english-spanish/sext,
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english-spanish/sexting
. Collins defines sextear as ‘enviar mensajes de texto con contenido
sexual’
[iii] Source: https://www.spanishdict.com/translate/kinky%20sex;
Copyright © Curiosity Media Inc. (2022.06.26)
No comments:
Post a Comment