Seña/signo & sign: The root SIGN-, Part 2

[This entry is an excerpt from Chapter 26, "Seña/signo & sign: The root SIGN-", of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

Lat. sĭgnāre and its descendants

The Latin noun sĭgnum developed into a verb in Latin, namely the first conjugation, regular verb sĭgnāre, meaning ‘to mark’, ‘to seal, stamp’, as well as ‘to designate’. The English verb to sign [ˈsaɪ̯n] is a 14th century borrowing from Old French signer, which is a loanword from Lat. sĭgnāre. Spanish used to have a patrimonial verb señar, a cognate of English to sign, but it became archaic, if not obsolete, as we shall see.

The main sense of the English verb to sign is ‘to write one’s name on (something) for the purposes of identification or authorization’ (COED). This verb can be used with or without an explicit direct object, e.g., I signed vs. I signed the letter. This meaning is expressed in Spanish with the verb firmar, which is an early, 10th century loanword from Latin firmāre ‘to affirm’, related to the semi-learned adjective firme ‘firm, steady’.

The English verb to sign is also used with the meanings ‘to use sign language’ or ‘to make a sign or signs; to signal’ (AHD). The verb also has some minor transitive senses, such as ‘to hire or engage by obtaining a signature on a contract’, e.g. signed a new pitcher or sign up actors for a tour (AHD). In Table 170 below, you can see the Spanish translations of the different senses of the English verb to sign, according to the VOX English-Spanish dictionary.

sign [saɪn] transitive verb 1 (letter, document, cheque, etc) firmar   sign your name here, please firme aquí, por favor   the two countries signed a treaty los dos países firmaron un tratado 2 (player, group) fichar (on/up, -)   Spurs have signed a new player los Spurs han fichado un nuevo jugador 3 (gesture) hacer una seña/señal   he signed me to shut up me hizo una señal para que me callara  intransitive verb 1 (write name) firmar 2 (player, group) fichar (for/with, por)   Laudrup signed for Real Madrid Laudrup fichó por el Real Madrid 3 AMERICAN ENGLISH (use sign language) comunicarse por señas, hablar por señas

Table 170: Entry for the verb sign in VOX English-Spanish Dictionary

The English verb to sign is also found in some very common phrasal verbs (cf. Part I, Chapter 4, §4.12.2). The following are some of the main ones, given here with English synonyms (in parentheses) and Spanish equivalents:

·      sign in (record arrival): registrarse (al entrar), anotarse, conectarse

·      sign out (depart): registrar la salida, registrarse al salir, desconectarse

·      sign on (enlist; start transmission): firmar; contratar, hacer firmar; abrir (una transmisión), alistarse; matricularse; etc.

·      sign off (conclude, stop transmission): despedirse, terminar la transmisión

·      sign up (enlist): reclutar, contratar; alistarse, matricularse, inscribirse, etc.

·      sign for (acknowledge receipt): firmar el recibo

As we said earlier, Spanish used to have a patrimonial verb señar derived from Lat. sĭgnāre, which now is pretty much obsolete. One major Spanish dictionary, María Moliner, but not the Academy’s DLE, mentions it, and it tells us that it is equivalent to hacer señas. As we shall see below, Spanish does have verbs derived from señar, such as the very common enseñar ‘to show; to teach’ and the less common reseñar ‘to review; to describe’. Just like many of the senses of Sp. seña were replaced by the derived noun señal, so many of the senses of Sp. señar, have been replaced by the derived verb señalar (see below).

Spanish has a learned version of Lat. sĭgnāre ‘to make a mark or sign’, namely signar, which is very fancy and quite rare. It is still used in the legal profession for the act of putting the notary’s seal on a document. In the catholic religion, a reflexive version of this verb, signarse, is used for making the sign of the cross on oneself. This use is rare in Modern Spanish, where the derived persignarse is much more common (see below).

Derived from the verb to sign we find the English noun signature, which came into English the 16th century from French signature, which borrowed it from Medieval Latin noun signātūra ‘sign’, which in Classical Latin meant ‘matrix of a seal’. This Latin noun was derived from the past-participle stem sĭgnāt‑ of the past participle sĭgnātus of the verb sĭgnāre (sĭgnātus: sĭgn‑āt‑us) with the derivational suffix ‑ūr‑ which was added to passive participle stems of verbs to derive nouns (cf. Part I, Chapter 8, §8.6.3). Past-participle roots typically ended in ‑t, and so words that ended in this t plus the Latin suffix ‑ūr‑ have given us many Latinate words in English ending in ‑ture in English (pronounced [ʧəɹ]), such as culture, mixture, adventure, structure, picture, and so on. Most of these nouns have Spanish cognates in ‑tura (the final ‑a was a Latin feminine nominative inflectional ending).[i]

Latin						Spanish	English
sĭgn	ā	re				señar	to sign
sĭgn	ā	t	us
sĭgn	ā	t	ūr	a		signatura	signature
sĭgn	ā	t	ōr	ius		—	signatory
sĭgn	ā	t	ār	ius		signatario	signatary

The Spanish word for signature is the semi-learned noun firma (firm-a), derived by back-formation (zero derivation) from the verb firmar ‘to sign’ that we just mentioned. Spanish does have a cognate of Eng. signature, namely the rare, learned signatura, which is a false friend. It is a rare word, used primarily to refer to a mark or number in a document or a book used to facilitate its being located, something like a catalog number or a docket number.[1]

There is another learned, noun derived from the same Latin stem sĭgnāt‑ in English, namely the noun signatory, meaning ‘a signer’, ‘a party that has signed an agreement’ (COED). The word comes from the Latin adjective signātōrĭus ‘of/related to sealing/signing, used in sealing/signing’, used in the phrase anulus signātōrĭus ‘seal ring’ used to sign official letters in the old day, It was formed with the agentive derivational suffix ‑ōr‑ (morphemic analysis: sign‑ā‑t‑ōr‑ĭ‑us). English borrowed and adapted the word signatory in the mid-17th century, first as an adjective (now obsolete) and then as the noun we know today.

The most common way to express the meaning of signatory in Spanish is the noun/adjective firmante, derived from the verb firmar (see above). Spanish does have an equivalent fancy word signatario (with an a instead of an o before the r) to refer to the person who signs a formal document, though it is rare (more so than Eng. signatory).[2] It would seem that Sp. signatario came from French signataire, from an earlier signandaire. Note that signatary has been used in English as an alternative spelling of signatory, probably under the influence of French signataire as well. (Related to Sp. signatario are consignatario ‘trustee, mortgagee, consignee’ and resignatario, a rare religious word.)

The Spanish verb señalar is obviously derived from the noun señal that we saw in the preceding section. It looks like a cognate with the English verb to signal [ˈsɪɡ.nəl], but they both seem to have been derived independently from the cognate nouns Eng. signal ~ Sp. señal and they are not equivalent in their uses either. In other words, these two verbs are not very good friends, despite having similar basic meanings, for they are rarely translations of each other.

In the 19th century, English converted the noun signal to a verb (by conversion or zero-derivation). The verb to signal means ‘to make signals’, ‘to transmit a signal’, or to ‘instruct or indicate by means of a signal’ (COED). The intransitive version of the verb to signal (synonymous with to give out a sign) translates into Spanish primarily as hacer señas (or hacer una seña). For the transitive sense of the verb to signal used with automobiles, señalar may be used, though indicar is probably more common, e.g. He signaled he was turning left ‘Indicó que torcía a la izquierda’.

As for the intransitive use of this sense of the verb to signal, namely ‘to turn on the (turn) signal’, Spanish often uses poner el intermitente (lit ‘to turn on the blinkers’), among others, but it may also use the intransitive verb señalizar. However, señalizar means primarily to put up signs, as in señalizar una carretera ‘to put up signs on a road’. The verb señalizar was derived, in Spanish, out of the noun señal and the verb-forming suffix ‑izar, equivalent and cognate of Eng. ‑ize (cf. Part I, Chapter 5, §5.6.2.1). Sp. señalizar is a very recent verb, since it first appeared in the DLE in 1970.

As for the meaning of Sp. señalar, it doesn’t seem to ever translate as Eng. to signal, but rather as to indicate, to point out, to point at, and to show or to mark, as in La flecha señalaba la salida ‘The arrow pointed to the exit’, El reloj señalaba las ocho ‘The clock showed twelve’, La caida le señaló la cara ‘The fall left a mark on his face’ (= La caída le dejó la cara señalada).

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[1] The DLE defines Sp. signatura as ‘señal de números y letras que se pone a un libro o a un documento para indicar su colocación dentro de una biblioteca o un archivo’.

[2] Note that the ending of the Spanish word is ‑ario, a descendant of Lat. ‑arius (just like Eng. ‑ary), whereas the ending of the English word is ‑ory, a descendant of Lat. ‑ōrius (just like Sp. ‑orio).

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[i] The following 67 words are the most common words in ‑ture in English: acupuncture, admixture, adventure, agriculture, aperture, apiculture, aquaculture, architecture, capture, caricature, conjecture, creature, culture, curvature, denture, departure, expenditure, feature, fixture, fracture, furniture, future, gesture, horticulture, immature, indenture, infrastructure, investiture, juncture, lecture, legislature, literature, manufacture, mature, miniature, mixture, moisture, musculature, nature, nomenclature, nurture, overture, pasture, picture, posture, premature, puncture, rapture, restructure, rupture, scripture, sculpture, signature, stature, stricture, structure, suture, tablature, temperature, texture, tincture, torture, vasculature, venture, viniculture, viticulture, and vulture.

Seña/signo & sign: The root SIGN-, Part 1

[This entry is an excerpt from Chapter 26, "Seña/signo & sign: The root SIGN-", of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

Introduction

A number of very common words in English and Spanish stem from the root sĭgn‑ of the Latin word sĭgnum. This word was polysemous. Its main sense was ‘a mark, token, sign, indication’, but had other derived senses. From this noun, Latin derived by conversion a verb sĭgnāre, meaning primarily ‘to put a mark on something’. Some of the words derived from this root in English are the nouns sign, signal and signature, as well as the verbs to sign and to signal. Some words derived from the root sĭgn‑ in Spanish are the nouns seña, señal, and signo, as well as the verb enseñar ‘to teach’.

In this chapter, we will look first at the noun reflexes of Latin sĭgnum, including some derived nouns that are closely related to the basic ones. Next, we will look at the verbs in English and Spanish that are derived from the root sĭgn‑ without prefixes. Finally, we will look at the verb sĭgnāre and several verbs that were derived from the verb in Latin and the cognates that they have spawned.

Nouns derived from Lat. sĭgnum

Lat. sĭgnum was a second declension, neuter noun, with the same form in the nominative and the accusative (root: sĭgn‑+ inflection: ‑um). The meanings of this polysemous word were the following, starting with the main one:

           1.  a mark, token, sign, indication

           2.  (military) a military standard, ensign, banner (including the aquila)

           3.  a watchword, password

           4.  a sign or token of any thing to come

           5.  an image, as a work of art; a figure, statue, picture, etc.

           6.  an image or device on a seal-ring; a seal, signet

           7.  a sign in the heavens, a constellation

           8.  (Church Latin) miraculous works

The English noun sign [ˈsaɪ̯n] is a 13th century loanword from Old French signe (still signe in modern French, pronounced [ˈsiɲ]). This French word is a learned borrowing from Latin sĭgnum. Actually, French has a patrimonial version of this word, namely seing [ˈsɛ̃], but most of the senses of this word were replaced by the learned signe. Fr. seing is still used in Modern French with the meaning ‘signature’. Therefore, seing and signe are doublets in this language.

As we just saw, Latin sĭgnum had the same primary meaning of ‘mark’ or, more generally, ‘something that stands for something else’, such as a flag or a signal. The root sĭgn‑ of this noun is thought to be related to the Proto-Indo-European verbal root *sek- that meant ‘to cut’, as in ‘to cut a mark’, for marks were often made by cutting into wood or other materials.[1]

Spanish has a direct patrimonial descendant of Lat. sĭgnum, namely seña. Actually, this word comes from the plural form of sĭgnum, namely sĭgna (sĭgn-a; the same in the nominative and the accusative cases). Sp. seña was converted into a singular noun meaning ‘sign, mark’. The sound changes we find here are totally the expected ones, for Latin short ĭ invariably became e in Spanish and Latin gn invariably became Spanish ñ ([ɲ]), giving us the root señ‑ (cf. Part I, Chapter 10, §10.3.2 and §10.4.6.4).

s	ĭ	g	n	a
s	e	ñ		a

The singular noun seña is not very common in Modern Spanish, since for the most part it has been replaced by the plural señas or the derived word señal (see below). The noun seña can be used sometimes with the meaning ‘gesture to convey something’. It is typically found in collocations such as hacer una seña ‘to make a sign, to signal’, ser seña (de que…) ‘to be a sign (that…)’, and  santo y seña ‘watchword’ or ‘shibboleth’.

As we just said, the noun seña is often used in its plural form, señas. This plural noun can translate in English as ‘address’ (or ‘direction(s) to a place’), as in Anoté sus señas en un papel ‘I wrote down her address on a piece of paper’. This plural noun señas can also be short for señas personales ‘physical description’ or for señas particulares ‘distinguishing marks’. It is also found in idiomatic phrases or collocations such as hacer señas a alguien ‘to signal somebody’, hablar por señas ‘to talk using signs’, dar señas de ‘to give signs of’, indicar por señas ‘to motion’, and the adverbial phrase para más señas, meaning something like ‘more specifically, to be precise’. It is also the word we use in the expression lenguaje de señas ‘sign language’ and lenguas de señas ‘sign languages’.

In addition to patrimonial seña, Spanish also has a doublet from the same Latin source, or actually from the singular wordform sĭgnum, namely the learned signo. The noun signo also means ‘sign, mark’, but it is used in different contexts from seña, so they are not equivalent. Some contexts where only signo is found are in the collocations signo del Zodiaco ‘astrological sign’ and signo de interrogación ‘question mark’. It is also found in the expression lenguaje de signos ‘sign language’, which is synonymous to lenguaje de señas.

In addition to patrimonial seña and learned signo, Spanish also has a semi-learned noun sino, meaning ‘destiny, fate’, which is on its way to becoming obsolete. This other sino is an abbreviation of the phrase si no(n) son, lit. ‘if they are not’, ‘unless they are’.[2] We call this word sino semi-learned because even though it is patrimonial, it did not undergo all of the expected sound changes due to the influence of the original written Latin word sĭgnum, which was ever-present in Medieval Christian religion. The reason for this is that the Latin word sĭgnum was used in Ecclesiastical (Church) Latin in the Middle Ages to refer to miracles and other such signs of divine intervention, much like sign was in English. The origin of this sense of the word predates Christianity, however. It turns out that one of the meanings of the Latin word sĭgnum had been ‘constellation (of stars)’, no doubt because of the connection the ancients thought there was between constellations and human lives and their ability to give us clues (signs) about the future. The sense of sign in Zodiac sign or astrological sign (Sp. signo del Zodiaco or signo zodiacal) has this origin as well.

Thus, presumably, because this sense of the Latin word was kept alive in Church Latin, it did not change as a patrimonial word should have changed, giving us this semi-learned doublet of patrimonial seña (and of learned signo). In other words, the first vowel remained i and did not change to e. However, the consonant cluster ‑gn‑ was simplified, to ‑n‑, but it did not change to ‑ñ‑, which is what happened to Latin ‑gn‑ normally in patrimonial words.

sign [saɪn] noun 1 (symbol) signo, símbolo   question sign signo de interrogación   peace sign símbolo de la paz 2 (gesture) gesto, seña; (signal) señal n.f.   wait until I give the sign espera hasta que dé la señal 3 (indication) señal n.f. indicio, muestra, signo; (proof) prueba; (trace) rastro   it’s a sure sign of rain es un claro indicio de lluvia   that must be a good sign eso debe de ser (una) buena señal   talking to oneself is the first sign of madness hablar solo es el primer signo de locura   there was no sign of them anywhere no se los veía por ninguna parte, no había ni rastro de ellos   there are no signs of life in this village no hay señales de vida en este pueblo   she’s showing signs of improvement da muestras de mejoría   all the signs are that ... todo parece indicar que ... 4 (board) letrero; (notice) anuncio, aviso; (over shop) letrero, rótulo IDIOMATIC EXPRESSION as a sign of como muestra de to make the sign of the cross hacer la señal de la cruz sign language lenguaje por señas sign of the zodiac signo del zodíaco

Table 169: Entry for the noun sign in VOX English-Spanish Dictionary

Moving now to the English noun sign, we find that it is quite polysemous, something that we may not seem very obvious until we compare the meanings of this word in different contexts with those of its Spanish equivalents. We can see this in Table 169, an adaptation of the entry for the noun sign in the VOX English-Spanish Dictionary, which shows the different possible translations of the English noun sign. Four major senses are identified, with all but one having several sub-senses, which have different possible translations into Spanish.

As we can see, seña and signo are not the only options when it comes to translate Eng. sign. Actually, one of the most common translations for English sign is not its cognate seña, but rather señal [se.ˈɲal], another patrimonial word, which is a cognate of English signal [ˈsɪɡ.nəɫ]. The English noun signal is a 14th century borrowing from Old French signal, seignal ‘seal, imprint, sign, mark’, from the Late or Medieval Latin noun signāle, derived from the neuter form of the Late Latin adjective sĭgnālis ‘of a sign, that acts as a sign’, which was formed from the root sĭgn‑ and the adjective-forming suffix ‑āl‑ (and the inflectional nominative singular ending ‑is: sĭgn‑+‑āl‑+‑is). Interestingly, the derived noun signāle came to compete with the original noun sign, perhaps because this word derived from sĭgnum had become so polysemous already.

The noun signāle gave us the patrimonial Spanish noun señal, a cognate of learned Eng. signal. And Sp. señal ended up replacing some of the uses of the noun seña. The Spanish noun señal has several senses (eight, according to the Spanish-English VOX dictionary), which translate as different words in English. The major senses of Sp. señal, most of which we already saw in Table 169, are the following:

·    ‘sign, indication’: Bostezar es señal de tener sueño ‘Yawning is a sign of being sleepy’

·    ‘bookmark’: Puse una señal en el libro ‘I put a bookmark on the book’

·    ‘(communication or warning) signal’: la señal de salida ‘the starting signal’

·    ‘road or street sign’: señal de tráfico ‘traffic sign’

·    ‘scar’: tengo una señal en el cuello ‘I have a scar on my neck’

·    ‘(telephone) tone’: El teléfono no da señal ‘There is no ring tone’

·    ‘(money) deposit’: Deposité una señal ayer ‘I put down a deposit yesterday’

A collocation with this word is la señal de la cruz ‘the sign of the cross’. In the next section we will see how these two nouns, Eng. signal and Sp. señal have been converted into verbs in these two languages, though they are hardly equivalent.

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[1] If so, Lat. sĭgnum would be related to the Latin verb secāre ‘to cut’ (root: sec‑), from where comes patrimonial Spanish segar ‘to mow, scythe’. However, the connection between these words, if there was one, is lost in time. The passive participle sectus of this verb has also given as a number of words in Spanish and English, such as Eng. section ~ Sp. sección and Eng. sector ~ Sp. sector.

[2] The reason that sino ‘fate’ is archaic if not obsolete is probably because belief in signs is not what it once was. Another word meaning ‘fate’ in Spanish is Sp. hado, which is now also archaic if not obsolete. This word is a cognate of Eng. fate, It. fato, and Port. fado (Port. fado is also ‘a type of popular Portuguese song, usually with a melancholy theme’, COED.). English fate is a late 14th century loan from Old French fate which, just like Sp. hado, is obsolete in Modern French. All of these words come from Lat. fatum, which literally meant ‘thing spoken’, derived from the verb farī ‘so speak’. Beyond this literal meaning, fatum meant ‘a prophetic declaration, oracle, prediction’ and, thus, ‘that which is ordained, destiny, fate’. Sp. hado is clearly a patrimonial word since it displays the f to h and t to d consonantal sounds (cf. Part I, Chapter 10).

By the way, the Modern Spanish words for fate are suerte (which also means ‘luck’) and, particularly, destino, a paronym of Eng. destiny. Both of these words go back to the Latin verb dēstĭnāre ‘to make firm’, ‘establish, determine’, and ‘intend, aim at’. Spanish borrowed this verb as destinar, with the meaning ‘to assign, allocate, set aside, reserve for a certain aim’, though when applied to people it can also mean ‘to appoint, assign, send, post’ (e.g. Lo destinaron a Barcelona ‘He was posted to Barcelona’).^[2] From the verb, Spanish derived the noun destino, but which came to mean ‘destiny, fate’ (cf. Eng. predestination), ‘purpose, use’, ‘destination’, and ‘post’. English borrowed this Latin verb as destine in the early 14th century from Old French destiner. Nowadays it is used almost exclusively in its derived adjectival form destined. As for the noun destiny, it is a mid-14th century loanword from Fr. destinée, a noun meaning ‘purpose, intent, fate, destiny; that which is destined’, derived from the past participle of the verb destiner, a loanword from Latin dēstĭnāre. Finally, English also has the derived noun destination referring to a place and corresponding also to Sp. destino (as in un avión con destino a Barcelona ‘a plane bound for Barcelona’).

Eng. American and Sp. americano

[This entry is an excerpt from Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

In a chapter that deals with the naming of people in the United States, we could not fail to include the cognates Eng. American ~ Sp. americano/a, which happen not to be the best of friends, though not exactly false friends either. These words, which are primarily adjectives but also nouns, are derived from the cognate nouns Eng. America ~ Sp. América, which is the name that came to be given to the so-called New World (the American continent) in the 16th century. This continent was named after Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine explorer, financier, navigator, and cartographer.

Vespucci was the one who first showed that Columbus had not stumbled upon the fringes of Asia or the Indies, as it was then called, but rather had come upon a separate landmass, or a ‘new world’, new, that is, for those who came from the (for them) ‘old world’ of Europe. Using the term New World for these lands is probably as much a display of ethnocentrism as saying that Columbus discovered America, which was already quite populated when he arrived. Considering the damage that the Europeans’ arrival did to the indigenous inhabitants of this continent, continuing to call it the ‘New World’ and to say that it was discovered can be seen as adding insult to injury.

Figure 99: Amerigo Vespucci[1]

Amerigo Vespucci worked for the European maritime powers of the time. He participated in several Portuguese expeditions along the coast of South America between 1499 and 1502 and wrote accounts of those trips that became very influential in Europe. Then in 1508, he was made chief of navigation of Spain (Sp. piloto mayor de Indias), in charge of planning voyages to the newly discovered territories, known then as the Indies (Sp. las Indias).

In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map in his Cosmographiae Introductio that became very well known and influential, in which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, whose Latinized name was Americus Vespucius. The first name Americus was made feminine to refer to a territory, much like names of countries and lands tend to end in ‑a and be feminine in Latin and the Romance languages. This resulted in the proper noun America for all of these newly discovered lands.

The Italian name Amerigo is Germanic in origin. It derives from the ancient Germanic name Emmerich, which was a compound of which the last part was Old High German rīhhi, which meant ‘power’ or ‘ruler’, from Proto-Germanic *rīkijaz, a derivative of *rīks ‘king, ruler’, a word that was found in many ancient Germanic given names. That root is also the source of the cognates Eng. rich ~ Sp. rico/a and it is a cognate of Lat. rex, the source of Sp. rey ‘king’ (and of tyrannosaurus rex). (Actually, this Germanic word seems to be a borrowing from Proto-Celtic *rīxs, which derives from Proto-Indo-European *h₃rḗǵs ‘ruler’.)

It is not clear what the first part of the compound was originally, however. It could have been ermen ‘all, complete, whole’, which would make this name a cognate of the name Ermenrich. It could also be amal ‘vigor, work, labor’, which would make it a cognate of the name Amalric. Or it could be heim ‘home’, which would make it a cognate of Heimirich, which meant something like ‘home ruler’ and which is the ancestor of Eng. Henry and Sp. Enrique (cf. Lat. Henricus). We find equivalents of this Italian name in other European languages, though none of them is very common. English has Emery, Amery, and Emory; French has Émeric, Portuguese and Spanish have Américo; Hungarian has Imre or Imrus; and Slovak has Imrich.

The name America caught on and it became commonplace in Europe to refer to the new lands as America (Sp. América) or sometimes the Americas (Sp. las Américas), since there were so many different lands discovered and conquered and occupied in this continent, at different times and by different countries. In Spanish, this term competed with the term (las) Indias (Eng. (the) Indies), which was no doubt more common, at least until the 20th century.

When the Spanish referred to America or anything American, they did so typically in the context of the lands controlled by the Spanish Crown and when the English referred to America or anything American, they did so in the context of the lands controlled by the English Crown (the British Crown after 1707), which were in North America. Thus, in the English-speaking world, the name America eventually came to refer primarily to the English colonies, before and after they became independent from Great Britain in 1776, after which time their official name came to be the United States of America. Likewise, inhabitants of this new country came to be known, in English, as Americans, in total disregard of the other sense of the words America and American, which referred to a whole continent and its people and which was never fully lost from the word, though it definitely became secondary.

In the Spanish-speaking world, however, America continued to be used to refer to a whole continent that went from the arctic tundra of Northern Canada to Cape Horn in Chile (Sp. Cabo de Hornos), although perhaps the more common name for the Spanish territories in the Americas, at least until the 20th century, was las Indias as we have seen. The English cognate of this word is Indies, a term which is now archaic. The term Indies was originally 

a name given to India and the adjacent regions and islands, and also to those lands of the Western Hemisphere discovered by Europeans in the 15th and 16th centuries, and originally supposed to be part of the former; with the progress of geographical knowledge the two were distinguished as East Indies and West Indies. (OED)

Nowadays, in English, the term Indies is somewhat different:

without qualification [it] means the East Indies; and West Indies is (in strict use) confined to the group of islands lying to the east of Central America; but, in translations from French, Spanish, or Portuguese, Indies often occurs in its 16th century sense. (OED)

Figure 100: North America in 1702 showing areas occupied by European settlements[2]

But going back to America, what we see here is an issue of specialization—some might call it (improper) appropriation—of a term in English that used to be for a continent to refer to a country in that continent. Actually, the country in question is only informally known as America, since United States is the more common name. Both of them are, of course, abbreviations for the official name, (the) United States of America.

What is not at all informal in English is the use of the derived word American, which is both an adjective and a noun, to refer to the people of that country and to anything that derives from that country. (Originally, American was an adjective, as in American food, which later came to be used as a noun, as in two Americans.) In English, American means primarily ‘from the United States’ and there is nothing informal about that use.

The problem with the narrowing of the meaning of the term America (in English) is not just one of utter disregard for all the other people of the hemisphere, though that may be a factor and that could very well be how many see it from the outside. After all, in the British Isles and in many parts of Europe, when someone spoke of America, they were primarily referring to the United States, as a place of emigration or as a source of novelty, for instance, so it is rather inevitable that America would come to stand for that country in many people’s minds and linguistic habits. That is just how language works.

The problem here is also in part linguistic, since it is rather difficult to derive an adjective from the country name The United States of America. When the country name is a single word, such as Italy, it is easy to derive an adjective to refer to things from that country, in this case Italian. We have many suffixes that can do that. But when the name of the country has several words, things are more complicated. It is not impossible, however. English could have created a term like Unitedstatian or United-Statian. The terms may seem odd and even funny, but that is because we are not used to them. Other languages have derived analogous terms to refer to things and people from the United States and those do not seem odd in those languages at all, such as Sp. estadounidense, which translates into English as American, that is ‘from the United States’. Actually, the word United-Statian has been coined before, it just never caught on. By the way, the French and many other languages follow English in this regard and the equivalent of American (Sp. estadounidense) in this language is américain /a.me.ʀi.ˈkɛ̃/, feminine américaine /a.me.ʀi.ˈkɛn/.

Leaders in the US were aware of the problems with the odd name they had chosen for the newborn country, which seemed like the job of a committee that could not find consensus on a better name. Many thought this name was unsatisfactory, in part because it had no proper adjectival form. Other names were even proposed for the country, such as United States of Columbia, Appalachia, and Freedonia or Fredonia, but none of them caught on.

To be fair, the terms America and American were not very commonly used to refer to the United States and its citizens until the late 19th century, in particular after the Civil War, when emphasis was put on the country’s unity. Until then, many Americans tended to identify more with their state rather than with the ‘federation of States’ and the term American was used less often and mostly by outsiders. Thus, the invention of the American nationality came much later than the creation of the country. Also, the choice of the term American for this nationality had a lot to do with the use that had been given to that term and its cognates in Europe (though not so much in Spain) by that time, for the United States was the main reference for people wanting to emigrate to America (the continent), for example. To go to America in most parts of Europe meant going to the United States. And if some invention came from America, chances were it came from the United States.

What do English dictionaries tell us about the meanings and uses of these terms? They all indicate their ambiguity, so that America is said to have two senses, one ‘the United States of America’ and the other ‘the American continent(s)’. Curiously, however, dictionaries differ as to what sense they give priority to. The American Heritage Dictionary gives as the main sense for America, ‘The United States’, and as for the second sense, which we are told is synonymous with the Americas, it is ‘the landmasses and islands of North America, Central America, and South America’. For Merriam Webster’s Collegiate, the sense ‘United States of America’ is the third one, giving priority to (1) ‘either continent (North America or South America) of the western hemisphere’ and (2) ‘the lands of the western hemisphere including North, Central, & South America & the West Indies’ (synonymous with the Americas).

The second sense of the MWC entry brings us to the question of how many Americas or American continents there are, understanding by the word continent either ‘any of the world's main continuous expanses of land’ (COED) or ‘a large mass of land surrounded by sea’ (DOCE). School children in the United States, and in the English-speaking world in general, are taught that there are seven continents, two of which are North America and South America, while separating Europe from Asia as well, despite the obvious contiguity of land in both cases and the lack of a sea separating them (especially the latter). There is another possible division of the Earth’s land masses into five continents, joining Europe with Asia (Eurasia) and North America with South America (America). In the Spanish-speaking world the norm is to consider North and South America to be a single continent. It is not illogical or unfair to suspect that there is a connection between not recognizing the unity of this landmass and the desire to appropriate the term America for part of that continent.[a]

Because the term America is often associated primarily with the United States, a new term is often used to refer to the whole American continent, namely Western Hemisphere. This is used only in certain contexts, mostly academic ones. This term can be translated literally into Spanish as Hemisferio Occidental, but that term is quite rare.

As for the noun American, dictionaries also tell us that it is also ambiguous. The AHD says it refers to either ‘a native or inhabitant of America’, a term that is ambiguous, and, secondly, to ‘a citizen of the United States’, in that order. Other dictionaries reverse the order of the senses (COED) and others only mention one sense, namely ‘someone from the US’ (DOCE).

The appropriation (in English) of the terms America and American for a small part of the American continent is bad enough in itself from the perspective of other peoples living in the continent, from Canadians, to Cubans and Argentineans. But what is even worse, from some people’s perspective, is the transferring or calquing of those senses of the words America and American to the cognates of these words in other languages, such as Spanish América and americano/a. People who are not under the spell of the rightfulness of US dominance over the hemisphere tend to take umbrage at the notion that words like Sp. América and americano/a would be used to refer to the United States and to things American, respectively. On the other hand, there is no doubt that many Americans (in the sense of natives of the American continent) do just that, at least informally, just like many Europeans do too, in their respective languages using the cognate equivalents of these words.

What do Spanish dictionaries tell us about the term América y americano/a? Well, you will not find América in a regular Spanish dictionary, such as the Academy’s Diccionario de la Lengua Española (DLE). The reason is that traditionally, proper nouns such as this one are not defined in such dictionaries, unlike in their English counterparts. For that, one has to go to an encyclopedic dictionary (Sp. diccionario enciclopédico), such as Larousse’s Vox. This particular dictionary tells us that the word América in Spanish refers solely to a continent composed of two parts, North America and South America. The United States is not mentioned.[b]

There are two dictionaries that do mention the word América and the perils associated with its use: the Academy’s Diccionario panhispánico de dudas and Academician Manuel Seco’s Diccionario de dudas y dificultades de la lengua española. The former tells us that ‘we must avoid identifying the name of the continent with the United States of America, an outrageous use found mostly in Spain’.[c] The Diccionario de dudas, on the other hand, relays a warning by Ricardo Alfaro in his Diccionario de anglicismos (1964), namely that we should be aware that in English, the word America is used to refer to the US and not to the New World and that they do the same with the word americano.[d] That is all. The assumption seems to be that is not what anybody does with the cognate Spanish term América.

As for americano/a, we are told in the various dictionaries that this is an adjective that can also be used as a noun and that it has various senses, the first one of which in all of them can be paraphrased as ‘from the American continent or related to it’. However, all dictionaries also mention (admit?) that informally or colloquially, the word is used as a synonym of estadounidense, that is, ‘from the United States of America’ (MM).[e]

Thus, what we find is that Spanish speakers do use the terms América and americano/a to refer to the United States and all things American (from the US), such as people and movies, as an alternative to the more standard term estadounidense. However, those are said to be informal or colloquial uses of the words, which are not expected in more formal or serious uses of the language.

The tolerance towards this use varies, however, even in informal or colloquial contexts. Some people object to this change in usage, calqued from the English cognates, and to the ambiguity of the terms. There is no doubt that there is a danger that with overuse, what is now a secondary, informal sense may eventually become the main sense of the word, displacing the original one. Many Spanish speakers probably do not feel already that by using the word América they are going to be understood as referring to the whole continent, and the same goes for the adjective-cum-noun americano/a. That is why it would seem that Spanish speakers are using these words less and less according to the supposedly primary, dictionary meanings, resorting instead to alternatives such as las Américas or to circumlocutions, such as el continente americano for América, and de las Américas or del continente americano for the adjective americano/a. A language will do what it has to do and language change is unstoppable. Usage precedes law and if usage of these words is what it is, their meanings will end up changing, regardless of what dictionaries or other authorities say.

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[a] The cognate nouns Eng. continent /ˈkɒn.tɪ.nənt/ ~ Sp. continente, derive from Lat. continēntem ‘holding together, continuous’ (con‑tin‑ēnt‑em; nominative: continēns), present participle of continēre ‘to hold, contain, enclose, etc.’, a verb derived from tenēre ‘to hold’ (source of Sp. tener ‘to have’) by addition of the prefix con‑ ‘with, together’, and source of the cognates Eng. contain ~ Sp. contener. In this sense, the noun continent originally (17th century) referred to the contrast between the New World and the Old World, but the concept eventually evolved to refer to contiguous landmasses, with some exceptions, as we have seen. (Before its use for landmasses, Eng. continent had been used with other senses, which are now obsolete.) English and Spanish also have adjective Eng. incontinent ~ Sp. incontinente, which mean ‘lacking voluntary control over urination or defecation’ (COED). In England, the Continent is used to refer to continental Europe, of which they are not too sure they are part of.

As to the question of how many continents there are, there is no correct answer. The concept of continent is not a natural one, but a cultural one, based on usefulness and usage. There is no need to insist that one division of the world into large land masses is better than any other.

[b] The first sentence of the original entry says: “Continente integrado por dos extensas masas de tierra de forma triangular: América del Norte y América del Sur, unidas por el istmo de Panamá (parte integrante de lo que se denomina América Central) y el archipiélago de las Antillas’ (Diccionario Enciclopédico Vox 1. © 2009 Larousse Editorial, S.L.).

[c] The original says: ‘Debe evitarse la identificación del nombre de este continente con los Estados Unidos de América (→ Estados Unidos, 4), uso abusivo que se da sobre todo en España.’

[d] The original: “‘En las traducciones del inglés debe tenerse siempre presente que entre los escritores de esa lengua es corriente usar el nombre América para referirse a los Estados Unidos y no al nuevo mundo’ (Alfaro). Algo similar hay que decir respecto al adjetivo y nombre americano, empleado por norteamericano o estadounidense”.

[e] DEL: sense 4: ‘estadounidense’. MM: sense 2: ‘(informal) De los Estados Unidos de América’. Larousse: sense 3: ‘coloquial Estadounidense, de Estados Unidos’. VOX: sense 4: ‘[persona] Que es de Estados Unidos. NOTA su uso es más frecuente en España’.

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[1] Source: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1935286 (obtained: 2017.09.11)

[2] Source: By User:Magicpiano - own work; structure (but not depicted areas of control) derived from File:Nouvelle-France map-en.svg, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9798531 (obtained: 2017.09.13)