Inspiration and perspiration, Part 15: Some Latin verbs that had nouns with the suffix -ĭōn-

[This entry comes from the chapter "Inspiration and Perspiration", of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

This is Part 15 (last). Go to Part 1

Eng. improvise ~ Sp. improvisar

We came across the cognate nouns Eng. improvisation ~ Sp. improvisación in the introductory section of this chapter. We mentioned then that these two nouns do not have a Latin source for there was no such verb as *imprōvīsāre in Latin. We said then that the verb that these nouns come from was created not in Latin but in a modern European language from a cognate of the English verb improvise. Such a verb was derived in Italian from the Italian adjective improviso, which was borrowed from the Latin adjective imprōvīsus (fem. imprōvīsa), that meant ‘unforeseen, unexpected’. The Italian verb improvvisare was formed in the mid-16th century with the meaning ‘to compose and perform music, poetry, drama, etc., spontaneously or without preparation’ (OED). We also saw that the Latin adjective imprōvīsus had been derived from the adjective prōvīsus ‘foreseen’ by adding with the negative prefix in‑. The adjective prōvīsus itself was derived by conversion from the identical passive participle of the verb prōvĭdēre ‘to see in the distance, to foresee’.

Latin		Italian
imprōvīsus      ‘unforeseen’ < prōvīsus     ‘foreseen’ < prōvĭdēre    ‘to foresee’	>	improvviso               ‘extempore’ > improvvisare        ‘extemporize’ > improvvisazione   ‘extemporization’

Eng. borrowed the verb improvise from Fr. improviser in the mid-17th century with the meaning ‘to compose and perform music, poetry, drama, etc., spontaneously or without preparation’ (OED). French borrowed this verb from Italian improvvisare, which as we saw was derived from the adjective improviso. By the 19th century, the verb was being used with the broader meaning of ‘produce or make (something) from whatever is available’ (COED). As for the derived English noun improvisation, the word is found already in the late 18th century. It is not clear if this noun was derived in English out of the verb and the suffix ‑ation, or whether it was borrowed. Its German cognate Improvisation is first attested around the same time (around 1790). The French and Italian versions are not attested until the 19th century, however (1807 and 1877, respectively). Sp. improvisar first appears in a Spanish dictionary in 1825 and in the Academy’s dictionary in 1837. As for the noun improvisación, it first appeared in the DRAE in 1843.

The Latin verb prōvĭdēre ‘to see in the distance, to foresee’, from which the words we are looking at ultimately come from, was derived by means of the prefix prō‑ ‘forward’ from the verb vĭdēre ‘to see’, the source of the patrimonial Sp. ver ‘to see’. This Latin verb’s principal parts were: present prōvĭdeō, present infinitive prōvĭdēre, perfect active prōvīdī, supine prōvīsum (which makes the passive participle prōvīsus, cf. Part I, Chapter 8, §8.4.3.1). This Latin verb has made it into both English and Spanish as provide and proveer, respectively. These two cognates are imperfect friends since they appear to have the same meaning but are used somewhat differently.

The main meaning of both verbs Eng. provide and Sp. proveer is actually shared by both, namely ‘to make available for use, furnish, supply’. This sense may be followed by two complements that express the thing provided and the recipient. In English, if the thing provided is the direct object, the recipient is marked with the preposition for, as in They provided jobs for everyone. On the other hand, if the recipient is the direct object, then the thing provided is coded with the preposition with, as in They provided everyone with jobs. In Spanish, proveer is used in the latter way, with the recipients coded as the indirect object and the thing provided following the preposition de (con is also occasionally used), as in Nos proveyeron de todo lo necesario ‘They supplied o furnished us with everything we needed’ (OSD), La misión del Estado es proveer a la satisfacción de intereses generales ‘The mission of the state is to provide for the satisfaction of the general interest’ (Panhispánico).

These verbs are occasionally used intransitively, without indicating what will be provided, and then they can be said to be equivalent. We find this equivalence in the well-known Christian expressions Eng. The Lord will provide and its Spanish equivalent Dios proveerá. However, Eng. provide and Sp. provide for the most part are used quite differently. To begin with, Eng. provide is more common than Sp. proveer, which means that in Spanish, alternatives to proveer are often preferred, such as abastecer, suministrar, proporcionar, facilitar, ofrecer, brindar, etc., depending on the context.

Furthermore, Eng. provide has additional senses, both transitive and intransitive, that do not translate into Spanish with the verb proveer. One of these meanings is ‘to make available; afford’ (AHD), as in a room that provides ample sunlight, cf. Sp. una habitación que ofrece abundante luz. Another transitive sense is ‘to set down as a stipulation’, as in The agreement provides deadlines for completion of the work, cf. Sp. El acuerdo proporciona/incluye plazos para la conclusion del trabajo.

The intransitive senses of Eng. provide are followed by a for prepositional phrase. The AHD gives three different senses of transitive provide: (1) ‘to take measures in preparation’ as in They provided for the common defense of the states, cf. Sp. Se hicieron cargo de la defensa de los estados; (2) ‘to supply means of subsistence’, as in She provides for her family by working in a hospital, cf. Sp. Mantiene a su familia trabajando en un hospital; and (3) ‘to make a stipulation or condition’, as in The Constitution provides for a bicameral legislature, cf. Sp. La Constitución estipula una legislatura bicameral. In the preceding sentences we see some of the alternative verbs that Spanish uses instead of proveer to translate the intransitive senses of Eng. provide.

English provide [pɹə.ˈvaɪ̯d] is an early 15th century loanword from written Latin. English had borrowed a descendant of Lat. prōvĭdēre through French, which still exists, namely purvey [pəɹ.ˈveɪ̯], which is now a rather formal verb that means ‘provide or supply (food, drink, or other goods) as one’s business’ (COED) (cf. Modern French pourvoir [puʀ.ˈvwaʀ], synonymous with fournir [fuʀ.ˈniʀ], related to Eng. furnish). Perhaps more common than the verb purvey is the derived noun purveyor [pəɹ.ˈveɪ̯.əɹ] ‘a person or business that sells or provides something’ (MWALD).

The Spanish verb proveer is an early, 13th century, loanword from Latin. It is conjugated like leer ‘to read’. The form of the verb is peculiar for it almost seems to be a patrimonial word, with a few obvious sound and spelling changes from the original Latin word, which must have come under the influence of the patrimonial verb ver ‘to see’, a verb which until around 1500 had an alternative spelling, namely veer. Sp. ver underwent several sound changes from the original Lat. vĭdēre, all of them regular. The ones that we are concerned with here are first that the Latin short ĭ changed to e, as expected, and second, that the intervocalic ‑d‑ was dropped (cf. Part I, Chapter 10). Only much later did the two ee’s collapse into one, which is why we find the spelling (and pronunciation) veer until so late. So, although this is a loanword, it was an early loan and the connection to the verb ver/veer was so close that this affected the pronunciation and the spelling of the word.

Another unusual thing about the verb proveer is its meaning, something it shares with its cognate Eng. provide. As we saw, its original meaning in Latin was ‘to foresee, to see ahead’, which is what we expect from the meaning of the prefix prō‑, not the meaning these words currently have. However, the meaning ‘to foresee’ came to be expressed in Spanish with the verb prever, which is conjugated like ver and formed with the prefix pre‑, from Lat. prae‑ ‘before’, since Sp. prever comes from Lat. praevĭdēre ‘to see first or beforehand, to foresee’ (L&S). In other words, the Latin ancestors of Sp. proveer and prever came to have very similar meanings and it is not too surprising that one of them changed its meaning. As we saw, the change in meaning also happened to Fr. pourvoir (originally spelled porveoir), a word that is attested a century earlier than the Spanish one and the source of Eng. purvey.

There are a few other curious things about Sp. proveer. For instance, it has a rare meaning ‘to fill (a job)’, as in proveer los puestos de secretario ‘to fill the vacant secretary positions’ (VOX). It can also be used in legal context with the meaning ‘to give an interim ruling on’, as in La denuncia aún está sin proveer por el juez ‘The complaint has not been ruled by the judge yet’ (VOX). Also, proveer is commonly conjugated reflexively, as in proveerse de, which can be translated as to get provisions, to equip oneself, or simply obtain, e.g. Nos proveemos en la tienda del pueblo ‘We get our provisions at the village store’ or Tenemos que proveernos de suficiente comida ‘We must get/obtain enough food’ (OSD).

Another interesting thing about proveer is that it has two past participles that are considered acceptable and current by the Academy, a regular one proveído/a (which is less common) and an irregular (original) provisto/a (speakers tend to prefer one or the other). (The irregular participle has the same irregular pattern as the past participle of the verb ver, which is visto. Either proveído or provisto can be used to form compound perfect tenses, such as he proveído/provisto ‘I have provided’ or as adjectives, e.g. la información proveída/provista ‘the provided information’. However, the irregular provisto/a is much more common in both cases, especially when used as an adjective. Curiously, unlike in the case of other verbs, where the regular version of the participle came after the irregular one, in this case the regular version proveído is older than the irregular one provisto. That would make sense in a loanword, which derived the participle regularly and only later, was this replaced by an irregular one formed by analogy with the patrimonial irregular participle of the related verb ver ‘to see’, namely visto ‘seen’. As for the source of Sp. visto, it is clearly not derived from the passive participle of the source verb vĭdēre, which was vīsus. It probably came from a Vulgar Latin modified version of it, namely *vīsĭtus, which is unattested.

Let us now look at an unusual thing about Eng. provide that makes it different from Sp. proveer, namely the fact that the participle provided in English is often used as a conjunction, in sentences such as I will come to see you provided you pay for the plane ticket. This provided translates into Spanish by any of a number of conditional conjunctions, such as siempre que, con tal que, or a condición de que. In some English dialects the variant providing may be used in the same way and with the same meaning.

This use of provided would seem to be a calque of the use of the Medieval Latin word proviso in legal documents written in Latin between the 13th and the 16th centuries in Britain. The legal clause started as proviso (quod) ‘provided (that)’. The Latin prōvīsō is a post-Classical word that was the ablative neuter wordform of prōvīsus, the passive participle of the verb prōvĭdēre, and thus it could be translated as ‘it being provided’.

This same Latin word prōvīsō has been borrowed into English as a noun, namely proviso [pɹə.ˈvaɪ̯.zoʊ̯]. Its meaning is ‘a clause in a document making a qualification, condition, or restriction’ (AHD). Note that although provisos are typically found in legal documents, the word can be used in somewhat formal or serious language for conditions that are felt to have the weight of legal conditions but without the need for them to be written down. Eng. proviso translates into Spanish simply as condición ‘condition’. The common English phrase with the proviso that translates into Spanish as con la condición de que or a condición de que.

Before we leave the Latin verb prōvĭdēre, let us mention one more word derived from it that has left descendants in English and Spanish. As we mentioned earlier, there was no Latin noun imprōvĭsātĭo, since there was no verb *imprōvĭsāre in Latin from which it could have been derived. But there was a noun derived by means of the ‑ĭōn‑ suffix and the passive participle stem prōvĭsus of the verb prōvĭdēre. The noun was prōvīsĭo (accusative wordform: prōvīsĭōnem). Its meanings were the literal meaning ‘a foreseeing, foreknowing’, as well as ‘foresight, providence’ and ‘forethought, precaution for a thing’ (L&S).

The cognate nouns Eng. provision ~ Sp. provisión are loanwords from Lat. prōvīsĭo. It seems that English provision [pɹə.ˈvɪʒ.ən] was borrowed by different authors at different times, starting in the early 14th century, some directly from Latin and some through French provision ‘precaution, care’, which is first attested in the mid-13th century. By the late 15th century, the word had acquired the meaning ‘thing being provided’ and by 1600 the meaning ‘supply of food’. The main meanings of Modern Eng. provision are (COED):

1.   the action of providing or supplying

2.   something supplied or provided

3.   arrangements for future eventualities or requirements.

4.   a condition or requirement in a legal document

5.   (in the plural: provisions) supplies of food, drink, or equipment, especially for a journey

In the late 18th century, English derived the verb to provision by conversion out of the noun provision. This verb’s main meaning is ‘supply with provisions’.

Spanish provisión is attested in the mid-15th century and it first appeared in a dictionary in 1495 (Nebrija). Although presumably it came from Latin, chances are that it came through French, where as we saw it is attested two centuries earlier. The main meanings of this verb match the first two of its English cognate provision (see above), as well as the fifth one, since the plural provisiones can be used with the same sense as Eng. provisions. However, the ‘arrangement for future eventualities’ sense of Eng. provision never translates as provisión but rather as previsión, related to prever ‘to foresee’ (see above). The legal ‘stipulation’ sense (#4 above) translates as disposición rather than previsión. Also, when it comes to the shared senses (1, 2, and 5), often Spanish prefers to use other words instead. Thus, the generic ‘supply’ sense of Eng. provision is more often translated as suministro or abastecimiento. Even the plural provisions is more likely to be translated as víveres than as provisiones.

As for the verbal version of this noun, Spanish has developed a verb from the noun provisión, namely aprovisionar, which includes an empty prefix a‑ (see §10.2.6 above). The verb is a rather recent creation, first appearing in a dictionary in 1917 and in the DRAE in 1927. It is not a common verb and Spanish prefers the synonymous verb abastecer ‘to supply’. Sp. aprovisionar is more common when speaking of provisioning ships or troops. Spanish also has a pronominal (reflexive) version of this verb, namely aprovisionarse (de), which translates as to stock up (on). It is equivalent to abastecerse (de).

Finally, let us mention the cognate nouns Eng. providence ~ Sp. providencia, which are also ultimately derived from the verb prōvĭdēre. They come from the Latin noun prōvĭdentĭa ‘foresight, foreknowledge’, derived from the present participle prōvĭdens (regular stem: prōvĭdent‑) of the verb prōvĭdēre and the Latin (also Greek) ending ‑ĭ‑a which was used to form abstract nouns, usually from adjectives or present participle stems (pro‑vĭd‑ent‑ĭ‑a). These nouns can be defined as ‘a force which is believed by some people to control what happens in our lives and to protect us’ (DOCE) or ‘the protective care of God or of nature as a spiritual power’ (COED) and they have been a central part of Christian teaching, which refers often to divine providence (Sp. providencia divina). Providence is, of course, also the name of the capital of the state of Rhode Island, located on the Providence River.

GO TO PART 16

Inspiration and perspiration, Part 14: Some Latin verbs that had nouns with the suffix -ĭōn-

[This entry comes from Chapter 10, "Inspiration and Perspiration", of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

This is Part 14. Go to Part 1

Eng. conspire and Sp. conspirar

Finally, the cognates Eng. conspire and Sp. conspirar are close friends, since they both mean ‘to make secret plans jointly to commit an unlawful or harmful act’ (COED), as in All six men admitted conspiring to steal cars (DOCE). Synonyms of the first sense of these verbs are to plot and to scheme in English and confabularse and maquinar in Spanish. This is obviously a figurative sense derived from the original literal verb conspīrāre, which was something like ‘to blow or breathe together’, formed with the prefix con‑ ‘with, together’. This Latin verb did have a figurative sense, but it didn’t seem to have the ‘secret’ or ‘illegal’ sense that its descendants have. The figurative sense of Lat. conspīrāre had was ‘to harmonize, agree, accord’. The current connotations of this verb of acting ‘secretly’ or ‘illegally’ seem to have been added to the verb in French, which borrowed it from Latin first, at the end of the 12th century, and then passed it on to English and Spanish.

The sense of Eng. conspire and Sp. conspirar we just mentioned refers to people conspiring secretly for some purpose. There is also a second sense that both words have in which it is not people’s actions but rather circumstances or events that ‘join forces’ or ‘act together’ to produce a result, typically a negative one. This sense can be described as ‘to seem to be acting together, especially with unfortunate results’ (COED), as in Pollution and neglect have conspired to ruin the city (DOCE). Synonyms of this sense of conspire are join, collude, or combine. The preposition used in Spanish for this second sense to indicate the result of the conspiracy is different from the one used for the first sense. For the first sense, the preposition is para, whereas for the second sense it is a, as in La malicia y la ignorancia conspiran a corromper las costumbres ‘Malice and ignorance conspire to pervert customs’ (VOX).

English borrowed the verb conspire [kən.ˈspaɪ̯.əɹ] in the 14th century from French, where it was a 12th century loanword from Latin (Mod. Fr. conspirer [kɔ̃s.pi.ˈʀe]). Spanish conspirar [kons.pi.ˈɾaɾ] is attested by the 16th century, also most likely a French loan.

Spanish has a noun with the suffix ‑ción associated with the verb conspirar, namely conspiración, which is attested even earlier than the verb, in the 15th century. This noun was undoubtedly borrowed from French, just like the verb, which itself had borrowed it from Latin in the 13th century. Interestingly, English too borrowed this word, in the early 14th century, as conspiration [ˌkʰɒn.spɪ.ˈɹeɪ̯.ʃən]. This noun, however, has been pretty much fully replaced in Modern English by its synonym conspiracy [kən.ˈspɪɹ.ə.si], which appeared in the language soon after its synonym, in the mid-14th century. It is not clear how the suffix switch from ‑tion to ‑cy took place in this English word. If it had happened in French, the word in that language would have been conspiratie, but that does not seem to have been a word used in that language.

The nouns Eng. conspiracy and Sp. conspiración can refer to both ‘the act of conspiring’, as well as ‘a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful’ (COED). Most dictionaries do not mention the English noun conspiration though, interestingly, those that do, typically (but not always) mention that it is obsolete.

A person who conspires with others is known in Spanish as conspirador/a. A cognate of this word, conspirator [kən.ˈspɪɹ.ə.tər], is also used in English with the same meaning, though its synonym is noun plotter, derived from the verb to plot, is probably more common. Both Eng. conspirator and Sp. conspirador are loanwords from French, which borrowed it first from Lat. conspirator. Another English synonym is the word conspirer [kən.ˈspaɪ̯.ɹəɹ], which is also a loan from Old French conspireur. Perhaps more common than conspirator is the derived word co-conspirator, which translates into Spanish as cómplice, related to  Eng. accomplice. Both of these words derive from Lat. complĭcem, accusative wordform of complex, meaning ‘allied, partner, confederate’. (The ‘prefix’ a­c‑ in Eng. accomplice is spurious and not in the original French sourceword, which was complice, so it must have been added in English  perhaps by a mistaken association with the verb accomplish.

English has also derived an adjective from the noun conspirator, namely conspiratorial [kən.ˌspɪɹ.ə.ˈtʰɔɹ.i.əl]. It translates into Spanish also as conspirador/a, an adjective that is identical  to the noun we just saw, or more commonly, as the phrase de complicidad ‘lit. of complicity’, e.g. Eng. a conspiratorial attitude = Sp. una actitud de complicidad. The noun complicidad is, of course, derived from the adjective/noun cómplice we just saw.

GO TO PART 15

Inspiration and perspiration, Part 13: Some Latin verbs that had nouns with the suffix -ĭōn-

[This entry comes from the chapter "Inspiration and Perspiration", of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

This is Part 13. Go to Part 1

Eng. perspire & Eng. transpire ~ Sp. transpirar

Moving on to the verb perspire, which has no Spanish cognate, we find that this verb is first attested in English in the 1640s, thirty years after the noun perspiration, a loanword from French, which itself had borrowed it from the post-Classical Latin noun perspiratĭo at least a hundred years earlier. (The Classical Latin verb perspīrāre from which the noun is derived, was itself quite rare.)

Although, there is an attestation of a French verb perspirer from 1585 in a medical context with the sense ‘to evaporate’, it seems likely that the English verb perspire was back-formed from the noun perspiration in English, rather than it being a loanword from either Latin or French. Eng. perspire and perspiration came to be used as euphemisms for the verb to sweat (Sp. sudar) and the nouns sweat and sweating (Sp. sudor).

French still has a noun perspiration, which is a rather technical term for ‘sweat’ and ‘(the act of) sweating’, but the verb perspirer is not found in most French dictionaries. Curiously, one technical or euphemistic way to say ‘to sweat/perspire’ in French is transpirer, a cognate of Eng. transpire and Sp. transpirar. (The common way to refer to sweat, however is suer [ˈsɥe], a cognate of Sp. sudar, both from Lat. sūdāre ‘to sweat’.) As for the noun perspiration, a possible translation into French of this term (besides the rare perspiration) are transpiration, a cognate of rare Eng. transpiration and Sp. transpiración. (The common noun to refer to sweat is sueur [sɥ.ˈœʀ], a cognate of Sp. sudor ‘sweat’, both from Lat. sūdor ‘sweat’.)

In other words, French came up with its own euphemisms for ‘sweat’, much like English did, but it used the verb transpirer and the noun transpiration, which contain the Latin prefix trans‑ ‘across’ rather than the prefix per‑ ‘through’ of the equivalent English words. Spanish copied French in this and has the, albeit rare, words transpirar and transpiración, which correspond to the English words perspire and perspiration. These euphemisms, however, do not seem to have caught on as much in Spanish as their English equivalents have in English, and are felt to be quite technical terms. In other words, Spanish speakers prefer sudar ‘to sweat’ and sudor ‘sweat’. Spanish however does not even have a noun *perspiración equivalent to the rare Fr. perspiration.

The verb transpirar and the noun transpiración are loanwords from Medieval Latin, since these words are not found in any Classical Latin texts. As we saw in Table 162, the Medieval Latin verb transpīrāre ‘to breathe through’ is formed with the prefix trans‑ ‘across’. It seems that French borrowed them first, in the early 16th century, as euphemisms for the meanings ‘to sweat’ and ‘sweat/sweating’ and that Spanish borrowed them through French. (The first mention of the verb and the noun in French are from 1503 and in Spanish from 1555.) Still, as we said, these words are nowhere near as common for these meanings as the verb sudar and the noun sudor for, it would seem, Spanish has not felt the need for euphemisms of these words as strongly as its neighbors.

English too has borrowed the verb transpire. This verb has a technical meaning in biology, namely ‘to give off (vapor containing waste products) through the pores of the skin or the stomata of plant tissue’ (AHD). That meaning of the verb is attested by the end of the 16th century. In regular speech, however, the verb transpire came to be used by the mid-18th century with the meaning ‘to leak out, become publicly known’, typically as it transpired that…, as Despite efforts to hush the matter up, it soon transpired that the colonels had met with the rebel leaders (AHD). This sense translates into Spanish as se supo que… or resultó que.... By the beginning of the 19th century, transpire also came to be used with in the more general sense of ‘happen, occur’, as in It is not known exactly what transpired (VOX). This use of transpire translates into Spanish as ocurrir or pasar, cf. Sp. No se sabe exactamente lo que ocurrió (VOX).

GO TO PART 14

Inspiration and perspiration, Part 12: Some Latin verbs that had nouns with the suffix -ĭōn-

[This entry comes from the chapter "Inspiration and Perspiration", of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

This is Part 12. Go to Part 1

Eng. expire ~ Sp. expirar

English expire and Spanish expirar, are also not as good friends as one might have thought. These words come from Lat. exspīrāre, a verb derived from spīrāre by the addition of the prefix ex‑ ‘out’.  Literally it meant ‘to breathe out’, but it also came to mean figuratively ‘to die’ (as in to give one’s last breath).

In Spanish, expirar is primarily a fancy and literary synonym of the verb morir ‘to die’, one that is used exclusively with living beings, typically humans. Although English expire can also have that meaning in literature, the most common meaning of this verb has a more figurative meaning yet, since it is primarily used to say that a thing, not a living being, such as a ticket or a can of soup, cannot or shouldn’t be used because it is no longer valid, is past its expiration date. That metaphorical or figurative sense of Eng. expire is not unheard of with the verb expirar in Spanish, though it is secondary and quite rare. We do find it sometimes in writing, however, to refer to official deadlines in phrases such as El plazo expira hoy ‘The deadline is today’ (lit. ‘The period to do something ends today’), typically with the word plazo ‘period, etc.’ or mes ‘month’. In Spanish America, it is not uncommon to find the word expirar used formally in writing with some of the same uses as Eng. expire, as in the sentence El mandato de Cristina Fernandez expira en 2015, found in a Spanish-language newspaper. (Note that the word mandato as used here is also probably a calque of Eng. mandate’s meaning ‘a command or an authorization given by a political electorate to its representative’, AHD).

		Main meaning	Minor meaning
Eng.	expire	a thing’s usefulness ends	a person dies
Sp.	expirar	a person dies	a thing’s usefulness ends

The figurative sense of English expire (‘come to an end’) is better expressed in Spanish by either vencer, if we’re talking about a contract, for instance, or, more commonly, caducar, though neither of these verbs can be used with deadlines or things like the end of a mandate. For those meanings a simple terminar ‘to end’ is probably preferable, or even the calqued expirar.

The verb caducar is used for products or documents that have an expiration date (Sp. fecha de caducidad ‘expiration date’). Thus, we say things like Esta lata de conserva caduca hoy ‘This tin can expires today’, Mi pasaporte caduca en 2020 ‘My passport expires in 2020’ or Mi licencia de manejo caducó el mes pasado ‘My driver’s license expired last month’. The derived adjective caducado/a ‘out of date, no longer valid’ is also used to talk about expiration dates that have already passed, e.g. Esta lata de sopa está caducada ‘This can of soup is expired’, or Mi pasaporte está caducado ‘My passport is expired’.

The Spanish verb caducar was derived, in Spanish, from the adjective caduco/a that means ‘deciduous’ when speaking of leaves (cf. de hoja caduca ‘deciduous’, cf. also technical Eng. caducous leaves) or ‘outdated’ or ‘decrepit’ in other contexts. This adjective, first attested in the early 15th century, is a loanword from the Latin adjective cădūcus (fem. cădūca, neut. cădūcum), meaning ‘that falls or has fallen, inclined to fall, etc.’. The verb caducar is already present in the late 15th century in the famous tragic comedy La celestina. The Latin adjective cădūcus is derived from the verb cadĕre ‘to fall’, source of patrimonial Sp. caer ‘to fall’, though the derivation is not a regular one.

The French cognate of Sp. caduco/a is masc. caduc fem. caduque, both pronounced [ka.ˈdyk], which is already attested in the mid-14th century and, hence, is probably where Spanish got these words from. On the other hand, there is no French verb *caduquer, which would seem to indicate that it is a Spanish innovation. English has borrowed the Latin adjective cădūcus as caducous, a technical term used primarily in botany and biology, which means ‘(of an organ or part) easily detached and shed at an early stage’ (COED).

The intransitive verb vencer is also used with this meaning in some contexts, primarily when referring to official deadlines and it is used with the noun plazo ‘period’, as in Mañana vence el plazo para solicitor las becas ‘Tomorrow is the deadline for asking for scholarships’. The primary meaning of the verb vencer is ‘to beat; to defeat, conquer, vanquish’. This verb is used transitively, with a required direct object, though unlike its synonym derrotar ‘defeat’, it can be used with an ‘understood’ object, e.g. Ayer venció el Barcelona ‘Yesterday, Barcelona won’ (with an explicit direct object: Ayer venció el Barcelona al Real Madrid ‘Yesterday, Barcelona beat Real Madrid).

Finally, related to the cognate verbs Eng. expire and Sp. expirar, are the nouns Eng. expiration and Sp. expiración. Eng. expiration means first of all ‘the act of coming to a close; termination’ (AHD), as in the expiration of a contract. Sp. expiración does not typically have this meaning, though as in the case of expirar, it may have started to be used that way under the influence of English. Sp. expiración refers to ‘the action and effect of expiring’ (DLE) or, more concretely, ‘end of life or a period of time’, in the latter case typically used with the noun plazo, as in La expiración del plazo cumple dentro de tres días ‘The period to act ends in three days’ (Clave). Eng. expiration can also be a technical medical term that means ‘the act of breathing out; exhalation’ (AHD). This use of the word corresponds not to Sp. expiración but, rather, Sp. espiración, an uncommon word, just like the associated verb espirar (see above). As we saw earlier, Sp. espirar means ‘to breathe out, exhale’ and experts say it is derived from Lat. spīrāre, with the expected addition of the initial prothetic e‑. The meaning, however, would seem to indicate that the verb espirar could have come from Lat. expīrāre ‘to breathe out’, not spīrāre ‘to breathe’. The sound adaptation, namely the loss of the [k] sound of expīrāre, is also something to be expected in Spanish a word coming from Latin.

Finally, just like the verbs Eng. expire and Sp. expirar can mean ‘to die’, also the derived nouns Eng. expiration and Sp. expiración can mean ‘death’, as in one’s last breath. Not all dictionaries give this as a meaning for Eng. expiration, though one that does say that the meaning is archaic (AHD). In Spanish, this sense of expiración is not archaic, though it does sound quite formal and literary.

GO TO PART 13

Inspiration and perspiration, Part 11: Some Latin verbs that had nouns with the suffix -ĭōn-

[This entry comes from Chapter 10, "Inspiration and Perspiration", of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

This is Part 11. Go to Part 1

Eng. aspire ~ Sp. aspirar

The main way to say ‘to breathe in’ in Spanish, is not inspirar, as we saw above but, rather, aspirar, a verb that is first attested in the 13th century. The word is an early loanword from Lat. aspīrāre, a word whose literal meaning was not ‘breathe in’, but ‘breathe upon’, since it was formed by adding the prefix ad‑ ‘to’ to the verb spīrāre (the d of the prefix fell off by dint of coming before two other consonants).

Sp. aspirar can also translate as suck in, draw in, actions not necessarily performed by living beings, but also by machines. Thus, we can say, for example, La bomba aspiró toda el agua del pozo ‘The pump sucked all the water out of the well’. Thus, it is not surprising that the word for vacuum cleaner in Spanish is aspiradora, probably short for máquina aspiradora, that is ‘machine that sucks/draws things in’, an adjective formed with the –(d)or(a) suffix that creates agent nouns and adjectives. It comes from the Latin suffix ‑ōr‑ that created agent nouns from the stem of passive participles of verbs (see the preceding section). Note that some dialects of Spanish in America use the verb aspirar with the sense ‘to vacuum’ (‘to hoover’ in British English), as in Voy a aspirar el sofá ‘I’m going to vacuum the sofa’. This a meaning of the word aspirer is still not found in most Spanish dictionaries (though some Spanish-English dictionaries do). The traditional expression for the verbal meaning ‘to vacuum’ is pasar la aspiradora, lit. ‘to pass the vacuum machine’, a phrase that is still preferred in most dialects of Spanish.

Sp. aspirar also has a figurative sense, one that it shares with its English cognate aspire, namely ‘to direct one’s hopes or ambitions towards achieving something’ (COED) or ‘to desire and work towards achieving something important’ (DOCE), as in Aspiro a ser profesor de universidad ‘I aspire to be a college professor’. This makes Sp. aspirar and Eng. aspire partial friends (or semi-false friends). The complement of this verb in both languages does not have to be a verb phrase as in the first example, but can be a noun phrase, as in aspire to the presidency or aspire to a scientific career.

English has a common adjective derived from this verb, namely aspiring, which is derived from the verb by means of the multi-purpose English suffix ‑ing. It is used to refer to individuals who aspire to a certain profession, as in the phrase aspiring actor, which translates into Spanish as actor en ciernes.[1] Spanish has also derived a noun from the verb aspirar to refer to individuals who aspire to things such as jobs or prizes, namely the noun aspirante, which translates into English as candidate or even applicant.

The cognate nouns that we are most interested in here are Eng. aspiration and Sp. aspiración. Sp. aspiración has two major meanings, just like the verb aspirar does: ‘breathing in’ (‘the introduction of air in the lungs’ and ‘a hope or ambition’, the meaning that Eng. aspiration has. In addition, these two nouns also have a technical use in linguistics. The term aspiration in linguistics refers to the quality of some speech sounds. Actually, aspiration can refer to two rather different things in the linguistic tradition.

First of all, aspiration can refer to the pronunciation of ‘(a vowel or word) with the initial release of breath associated with English h, as in hurry’ (AHD). This use of aspiration comes from the Ancient Greek study tradition, where the sound [h] was seen as a property of a vowel and was indicated as a mark on the vowel, not as a separate letter, a mark known as breath (cf. Part I, Chapter 8, §8.2.5).

The word aspiration is also used in linguistics to refer to a property of consonants, voiceless stop consonants in particular (Sp. consonants oclusivas sordas), when they are pronounced with a puff of air coming out of the mouth upon their release. English voiceless stops /p t k/ are aspirated when the start a stressed syllable, for instance, as in the words pin, tin, or kin (cf. Part I, Chapter 7, §7.3.1, §7.10.1, §7.12.2). Ancient Greek, on the other hand, had a set of aspirated voiceless consonants that contrasted with a set of unaspirated ones (cf. Part I, Chapter 8, §8.2.6). (In English, voiced and voiceless consonants do not contrast like they did in Greek and in Spanish, voiceless consonants are always unaspirated.) The phonetic symbol to indicate that a consonant is aspirated is a raised [ʰ], as in Eng. pin [ˈpʰɪn], tin [ˈtʰɪn] and kin [ˈkʰɪn], although the sound property of aspiration is nothing like the sound that the symbol [h] represents in phonetic transcription, which is the sound of the letter 〈h〉 in English words, when it is not ‘silent’, in words such as home [ˈhoʊ̯m].[2]

The Spanish verb associated with the linguistic sense of aspiration is aspirar, as in En español no se aspira nunca la te ‘In Spanish, the t are never aspirated’. The English equivalent of this verb is not aspire, however, but aspirate [ˈæs.pəɹ.eɪ̯t], a back-formation from the noun aspiration. The dictionary defines the verb aspirate as (1) ‘to pronounce (a vowel or word) with the initial release of breath associated with English h, as in hurry’ and (2) ‘to follow (a consonant, especially a stop consonant) with a puff of breath that is clearly audible before the next sound begins, as in English pit or kit’ (AHD). These two meanings correspond to the two linguistic senses of the noun aspiration we just saw. In addition, the verb aspirate can also mean ‘to draw (something) into the lungs; inhale’ and, in medicine, ‘to remove (liquids or gases) by means of a suction device’ (AHD).

An English word related to the ones we just saw is the noun aspirate, which is pronounced [ˈæs.pəɹ.ət]. In linguistics, this noun refers primarily to ‘a speech sound followed by a puff of breath’ (AHD), which translates into Spanish as consonante aspirada or sonido aspirado. The English noun aspirate is also used in medicine with the meaning ‘matter removed by aspiration’ (AHD).

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[1] Sp. cierne is a rare noun that refers to the fruit of a plant as it is blossoming, before it is fully formed (Sp. en flor), in particular the fruit of vines, olive trees, or cereals. It is only used to day in the expression en cierne(s) ‘in bloom, budding; in the making’. The noun is related to the verb cerner (some people say cernir), which means (among other things) ‘to bud, blossom’ when speaking of plants and ‘to sift’ when speaking of flour or sand.

[2] Because the term aspiration (Sp. aspiración) has been to refer to the [h] sound before a vowel, it also came to be used in Spanish linguistics to refer for the pronunciation of an /s/ phoneme as the sound [h] after a vowel, at the end of a syllable (implosive or coda position) in some dialects of Spanish, such as in Caribbean Spanish in words like mismo and desde, cf. Part I, Chapter 7, §7.17.2,  and Chapter 11, §11.2, §11.5.3. As we saw in those chapters, a better term for this phonetic phenomenon is debuccalization.