The cognates Eng. jubilation
~ Sp. jubilación
The words
Eng. jubilation ~ Sp. jubilación are cognates, since they both
come from the Latin noun iūbĭlātĭo,
or actually form this word’s regular stem iūbĭlātĭōn‑,
which meant ‘wild shouting of joy, etc.’, that is, the outward expression of a
feeling of joy. The meanings of Eng. jubilation
~ Sp. jubilación are quite different,
however, which makes them false friends. Whereas the meaning of Eng. jubilation is quite close to that of the
original Latin word, Sp. jubilación actually
means ‘retirement’.
Figure 229: Retired Picnic at Otford Lookout, Australia[1]
Eng. jubilation [ʤu.bɪ.ˈleɪ̯.ʃən] is attested
in writing as early as the late 14th century, as a loanword from Old French,
which borrowed it from Latin probably in the 12th century, when it is first
attested as jubilaciun. In the first
record that we have of this word in English, it was spelled iubilacioun. Modern French jubilation [ʒy.bi.lɑ.sjɔ̃] also has the
same meaning that its Latin ancestor had and that its cognate jubilation has in English.
Some
dictionaries say that Eng. jubilation
has the same meaning as the Latin source word, namely ‘an expression of joy’,
e.g. ‘loud utterance of joy, exultation, (public) rejoicing; an expression of
exultant joy’ (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). Most dictionaries mention that the word can also mean the
feeling, as in ‘a feeling of or the expression of joy or exultation’ (Random
House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary). Actually, some verbs only mention the
feeling and not its expression as the meaning of this word in English. Curiously,
some dictionaries only mention the feeling in their definitions of jubilation, e.g. a feeling of great
happiness because of a success’ (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
Sp. jubilación [xu.βi.la.ˈθ/si̯on] is not attested
in writing until the late 16th century, though the verb from which it is derived
is attested at least a hundred years earlier (see below), but still much later
than its French cognate. As we said, now jubilación
means simply ‘retirement’, that is, the act of retiring, or the condition of
being retired from work-life. The Clave
dictionary defines jubilación as
‘definitive retirement from a job, generally for having reached the age
determined by law or for suffering a physical disability’, as in ¿Cuándo es tu jubilación? ‘When is your
retirement’ or ‘When does your retirement start?’. This meaning seems to have
been the meaning of Sp. jubilación since
it was first borrowed and the reason seems to be a confusion that arose between
this word and an unrelated word jubileo
‘jubilee’, as we will see later on.
The source verb for these nouns
As is the
case with all the cognate nouns that end in Eng. ‑tion and Sp. ‑ción, they
come from Latin nouns that had the suffix ‑ĭōn‑
that was used to derive action nouns from verbs. The suffix attached itself to
the stem of the passive participle form of the verb, which in the case of
regular verbs was formed by adding the suffix ‑t‑ to the basic stem of the
verb. That explains why most words that end in Eng. ‑ion also have a t before
that ending. In Spanish, most nouns that end in ‑ión, have a ‑c‑ before
it, not a ‑t‑, which is due a
medieval spelling adaptation (cf. Part I, Chapter 10, §10.4.3.3). (Another common letter before this
ending is ‑s‑, as in Eng. vision ~ Sp. visión, which is the result of a sound change that took place in
Latin when two t’s or a d and the t of the suffix came together, cf. Chapter 8, §8.4.3.1.3.)
The Latin
noun iūbĭlātĭōn‑ ‘a shouting of joy,
cheer, etc.’ was derived from the passive participle stem iūbĭlā‑t‑ of the verb iūbĭlāre
that meant ‘to sing or shout joyfully’, ‘to cheer’, ‘to halloo, huzza’ (iūbĭl‑ā‑re, iūbĭl‑ā‑t‑ĭōn‑). The Latin verb iūbĭlāre
presumably comes from an exclamation of joy in the ancestor language which has
been reconstructed as *jū ‘yeah!’.
English has
borrowed this verb as to jubilate ‘to
rejoice; exult’, though it is quite fancy and rare. It is first attested in the
17th century and it no doubt comes from Latin, from the passive participle
wordform iūbĭlātus of the verb iūbĭlāre. In its first attestation in
1604, it was used with the meaning ‘to make glad, to rejoice’, as in iubilating the heart with pleasure (OED),
but this meaning is now obsolete. A few decades later, this verb is found being
used intransitively with the meaning ‘to utter sounds of joy or exultation; to
make demonstrations of joy; to rejoice, exult’ (OED). Some dictionaries mention
a new, more recent secondary meaning for this verb, namely ‘to celebrate a
jubilee or joyful occasion’, thus perpetuating a connection of this word with
the word jubilee which is not related
to it etymologically, as we shall see below (Random House Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary). Note that there is also a noun jubilate
in English, pronounced [ʤuːbɪˈleɪ̯tiː/ or [juːbiːˈlɑːteɪ̯] used by some
Christian denominations with different meanings.)
In Spanish, also
has a verb derived to the noun jubilación,
namely jubilar which is obviously a
loanword from Lat. iūbĭlāre and thus
a cognate of Eng. jubilate. But, as in
the case of the noun, the verb jubilar,
which is a transitive one, means primarily ‘to retire’, as in ‘to declare an
employee to be retired from his work activities due to having reached the legal
retirement age or due to illness, and receiving a pension’ (María Moliner). This
verb is mostly used reflexively, as jubilarse,
which is how Spanish makes transitive verbs intransitive, meaning ‘to reach
retirement’ (the Academies’ Diccionario
de la lengua española).
Sp. jubilarse and retirarse
and Eng. retire
The Spanish
verb jubilarse is somewhat equivalent
to English verb retire and the
Spanish noun jubilación is somewhat
equivalent to the English noun retirement.
Eng. retire is a 16th century
loanword from Fr. retirer, a transitive
verb meaning ‘to draw back; to withdraw (something)’. English retire is attested by 1533 and it was originally
only transitive. It was first used in the military context, said of troops and
meaning ‘to fall back or give ground’, much like retreat. Soon thereafter the verb is attested with the intransitive
meanings ‘to move back or away’, ‘to retreat to a place for seclusion,
security, or privacy’, and a few decades later, ‘to go to bed or rest’
(OED). By the middle of the century it
was being used transitively to some extent, such as with the sense of ‘to pull
back troops’. The sense ‘to leave office, employment, or service permanently, now
esp. on reaching pensionable age; to stop working’ started by the year 1600
(OED). Originally, this sense seems to have started to refer to soldiers who
left the service.
The French
verb retirer seems to have been
formed in French out of the verb tirer
‘to pull’ and the prefix re‑ ‘back;
again’. Fr. retirer is first attested
in the mid-12th century. The verb tirer
seems to be much older, but its origin is uncertain. It is found in all Western
Romance languages. Some think it may be a Germanic word, one related to patrimonial
Eng. tear (DCECH).
Modern French tirer means ‘to pull,
to drag’ and ‘to draw, to tow’, but also ‘to shoot, set off, send off’. It is
thus, a close friend of its Spanish cognate tirar,
which is also found very frequently in the earliest Old Spanish writings. Also,
from very early on, Sp. tirar had the
derived meaning ‘to take out, take away, throw out’, the ancestor of the still
current additional meanings of tirar ‘to
shoot’, ‘to throw’, and ‘to throw away’, which are quite old as well.
There are
quite a few Spanish words derived from this verb, such as tiro ‘shot’, tirador ‘shooter’,
tirante ‘adj. taut, tight, tense; n. strap, suspender’, tirorear ‘to shoot repeatedly’, tiroteo ‘shoting, exchange of shots’, estirar ‘to stretch’, estirón ‘pull, jerk, tug’. Another
related word is retirar, which first
appears in the latter part of the 16th century, much later than in English, and
it is thus quite likely that Spanish too got this word through French. Related
to this verb are the adjective retirado/a
‘remote, secluded, out-of-the-way’ as well as ‘retired’, which is derived from
the past participle of the verb, and the converted noun retiro ‘retreat’ as well as ‘retirement’.
Note that
the meanings of Sp. jubilarse and
Eng. retire are quite close but are
not identical, just like the related nouns Sp. jubilación and Eng. retirement
are not the same. In Spanish, jubilarse
and jubilación strongly imply that
one has reached normal retirement age and receives a pension. Thus, it would be
odd to use these words for a 30-year old professional soccer player who has
stopped playing professionally. In English, we use the verb retire for that situation as well,
however. In the case of the soccer player, or of anyone who stops practicing a
profession early and does not necessarily receive a traditional pension, the
verb jubilarse is not appropriate in
Spanish. For that, Spanish uses the verb retirarse,
a cognate of Eng. retire. The transitive version is, of course, retirar, Retiraron al futbolista tras el accidente ‘They retired the soccer
player after the accident’.
Actually, some
dialects of Spanish use the verb retirarse
as a synonym of jubilarse (and retirar as a synonym of jubilar). Thus, the María Moliner
dictionary tells us that jubilarse is
equivalent to retirarse and jubilación is equivalent to retiro. The Academies’ dictionary, the
DLE, which still has a strong bias towards the Spanish of Spain, however, does
mention retirarse and retiro (and retirado), but avoids saying clearly that these words are equivalent
to jubilarse and jubilación (and jubilado),
while defining all of them in a somewhat circular manner.
It seems
that the verb retirarse and the noun retiro were first used to refer to the
discharge of professional soldiers in the military and that from there, some
dialects have come to apply it to other forms of cessation of gainful activities,
instead of jubilarse and jubilación, probably under the influence
of English. In dialects of Spanish that are more heavily influenced by English,
such as the one spoken in the United States, only the term retirarse is common, not jubilarse.
Speakers of these dialects may not even be aware of the existence of the words jubilarse and jubilación to talk about retirement, although the use of these
words with those meanings goes back many centuries.
Related to
the English verb retire is the noun retirement, pronounced in the US either
[ɹə.ˈtʰaɪ̯.əɹ.mənt] or [ɹi.ˈtʰaɪ̯.əɹ.mənt], equivalent to Sp. jubilación and retiro. This noun is also a loanword from French, from the late
16th century. This noun was created in French out of the verb retirer in the early 16th century, with
the suffix ‑ment that derived nouns
from verbs. Originally, the term was used in the military context for the act
of retreating or pulling back troops. This word is quite rare in French today,
however. The way ‘retirement’ is expressed in Modern French is by the noun retraite, the source of Eng. retreat, and which can still mean
‘retreat’ in a military (and religious) context, but whose main meanings are ‘pension,
superannuation’, and ‘retirement’. The equivalent of the English verb retire is prendre sa retraite when its retirement from a job.
The reflexive verb se retirer,
equivalent to Sp. retirarse, is used
for retirement from business or politics, for instance. The French equivalent of
transitive Eng. retire is mettre a la retraite ‘to make someone retire’
(Sp. jubilar). Non-reflexive Fr. retirer is still used with the senses ‘to
take off/away’, ‘to remove’, ‘to withdraw’, ‘to retire (troops)’, etc.
We should
also mention that the verbs Eng. retire
and Spanish jubilar(se) can have
other senses besides the ones we have been discussing. For example, Eng. retire can have the (intransitive)
meaning ‘to stop playing in a game, competition, etc., especially because of injury’,
which in Spanish would be expressed with abandonar
(el campo, etc.). Eng. retire can also have the rather formal sense
of ‘to move to a different place’, as in He
retired to the library to study (MWALD). There is even a transitive meaning
of retire that can be defined as ‘to
take (something) out of use, service, or production’, as in The Navy is retiring the old battleship
(MWALD). Note that Spanish can use jubilar
with a sense very similar to that last one, but only colloquially and in a somewhat
humorous sense. One dictionary defines that sense of Sp. jubilar as ‘to stop using something because it is useless, old, or
broken’ (DUEAE), as in the expression jubilar
una camisa ‘lit. to retire a shirt’, i.e. ‘to stop using an old shirt’ (cf.
Sp. ‘dejar de usar una cosa por inútil, vieja o
estropeada’, DUEAE).
Finally, it is
important to note that the practice of retiring from work and receiving a private
or public pension or subsidy to live the rest of one’s years is a relatively recent
one. Although this practice started in the 18th century, when people started to
live longer, it was not established as part of public policy in the more
advanced industrial countries until the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
after hard-fought battles by the working class. The first country to adopt an
official retirement policy was the Germany under Otto von Bismarck in 1883 in a
maneuver against socialist demands. (Don’t forget that the country of Germany
was only unified as a nation-state in 1871.) In the United States, retirement
only became something sanctioned by the government with President Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s Social Security Act of 1935.
Until recent
times, the norm was for people to work until they could not do work anymore, which
typically meant until they died. Of course, we have to keep in mind people used
to die much younger than they do now since average life expectancy in Europe for
men was about 35 years until the latter part of the 19th century. The closest thing
to retirement that existed before recent times probably took place in the military,
where ‘retirement’ often took place before one became too decrepit to fight wars,
assuming one survived. Thus, it is not surprising that the words that English uses
for retirement, retire and retirement, were first used in the military
for the discharge of soldiers (Sp. licenciar).
And in Spanish too, retirar and retiro were first used in the same military
context, as we have seen. Actually, the practice of discharging soldiers after a
certain period of service, often 20 years, was practiced since the time of the Romans.
Also, at the end of that service, legionnaires received a bonus, sometimes in the
form of land, to allow them to survive the rest of their days.
Eng. jubilee and Sp. jubileo
So how did
these nouns Eng. jubilation ~ Sp. jubilación and their associated verbs come
to have such different meanings? We know that it is the Spanish word that
changed its meaning, since the meaning of the English word matches the meaning
of the original Latin source word. Could the fact that retirement is often a
cause for jubilation be the connection between the meanings of both words? Attractive
as that connection might seem, we know that it is not fully accurate, though
there may be a grain of truth to it. The matter is complicated, and the answer
is to be found in another set of cognates, namely Eng. jubilee and Sp. jubileo.
Eng. jubilee, pronounced [ˈʤu.bɪ.li] or [ˈʤu.bə.li],
is first attested in the late 14th century. According to one dictionary, the main
meaning of this word is ‘a specially celebrated anniversary, especially a 50th
anniversary’ and ‘the celebration of such an anniversary’ (AHD). The same
dictionary also gives two other senses for this word, however: ‘a season or an
occasion of joyful celebration’ and ‘jubilation; rejoicing’. Yet another meaning
of the word jubilee is the word’s
original meaning, namely ‘in the Hebrew Scriptures, a year of rest to be observed
by the Israelites every 50th year, during which slaves were to be set free, alienated
property restored to the former owners, and the lands left untilled’ (AHD). Finally,
in the Catholic Church, the word jubilee
came to have a related meaning, namely ‘a year during which plenary indulgence
may be obtained by the performance of certain pious acts’. Since the end of the
14th century, a jubilee year traditionally came every 25 years.
Sp. jubileo [xu.βi.ˈle.o], which is already
attested in the 13th century, only has the last two, religious meanings of its
English cognate, namely the Hebrew one and the Catholic (indulgence) one, which
can be defined as ‘plenary, solemn and universal indulgence granted by the Pope
at certain times and occasions’ (Larousse). Crucially, this Spanish word does
not have the ‘anniversary’ meaning that its English cognate has. The word is
also used colloquially in some dialects of Spanish with the meaning ‘constant
entering and exiting of people from a place’
( ‘entrada y salida frecuente de muchas personas de un lugar’, DUEAE),
as in the sentence Con el jubileo que
había allí no es raro que los perdiéramos de vista ‘There were so many
people going in and out that it is not surprising that we lost sight of them’.
However, that meaning of the word jubileo
is rare today and it is fair to say that most Spanish speakers probably have never
heard it.
The direct
source of Eng. jubilee and Sp. jubileo is the Late Latin adjective iubilaeus ‘of (a) jubilee’, which was
also used as a noun from the shortening of the phrase iubilaeus annus ‘jubilee
year, year of jubilee’. The ultimate source is the Hebrew word יובל (yobēl/yovēl) that meant ‘ram, ram’s horn’, which is the
original meaning of this word, and also ‘jubilee’ in the Hebrew sense mentioned
earlier. Traditionally it has been thought that the ‘jubilee’ meaning of this Hebrew
word is derived from the ‘ram’s horn’ one, due to the fact that the horn was used
as a trumpet to announce the jubilee year, though some question that theory. In
the Biblical Hebrew world,
The Jubilee (Hebrew: יובל
yōḇel; Yiddish: yoyvl) is the year at
the end of seven cycles of shmita
(Sabbatical years), and according to Biblical regulations had a special impact
on the ownership and management of land in the Land of Israel; there is some
debate whether it was the 49th year (the last year of seven sabbatical cycles,
referred to as the Sabbath’s Sabbath), or whether it was the following (50th)
year. Jubilee deals largely with land, property, and property rights. According
to Leviticus, slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven, and
the mercies of God would be particularly manifest. (Wikipedia)[2]
This Hebrew word was borrowed into Biblical
Greek as
ἰώβ
ηλ
ος (iṓbēlos)
‘jubilee’. In classical times, many Jews used the Greek version of the Hebrew
Bible, the Christians’ Old Testament, known as the Septuagint (Sp.
septuaginta).
Also, let us not forget
that the second part of the Christian Bible, known as the New Testament by Christians,
was originally written in Koiné Greek.
The adjective derived from
this noun in Greek was
ἰωβ
ηλα
ῖος (iōbēlaîos) ‘of a
jubilee’. This Greek adjective was borrowed into Church Latin as the noun
iūbilaeus, as we have seen, appearing
already in the Vulgate, the western Christian Church’s original Latin
translation of the Bible. From this Latin word come Eng.
jubilee and Sp.
jubileo,
as well as French
jubilé and Italian
giubbileo, among others.
Hebrew
|
Greek
|
Latin
|
English
|
יובל (yobēl/yovēl)
|
n. ἰώβηλος (iṓbēlos)
|
|
|
|
adj. ἰωβηλαῖος (iōbēlaîos)
|
adj./n. iūbilaeus
|
Eng. n. jubilee
Sp. n. jubileo
|
The fact that this Greek word was Latinized as iūbilaeus and not as iōbēlaeus as it should have, considering
how Greek words were typically changed when they were borrowed, indicates that
the word was contaminated from the very beginning by the already existing Latin
verb iūbĭlāre, since the two words
sounded very much alike and the two meanings must have seemed quite compatible
to them. This association between these words is found also in all languages
that have borrowed both of these words to a greater or lesser extent, such as
the Romance languages and English, as we have seen. The connection of the two
words in the popular imagination, faint as it may have been, may have had
something to do with the final use of the Spanish noun jubilación to name the concept of retirement, as we shall see. Note
that Sp. jubileo is attested in Spanish
centuries before the appearance of the verb jubilar
or the noun jubilación.
The idea of the
jubilee was something very present in
West European cultures since it acquired a new meaning beyond the Biblical one in
the late Middle Ages in Catholic Christianity, the official religion of the Roman
empire in the 4th century and of all of Western Europe until the Protestant
Reformation in the 16th century. That is because in the year 1300, Pope
Boniface VIII chose this word to refer to ‘a year of remission from the penal
consequences of sin, during which plenary indulgence might be obtained by a
pilgrimage to Rome, the visiting of certain churches there, the giving of alms,
fasting three days, and the performance of other pious works’ (OED).
In the Roman
Catholic Church, an indulgence was reduction in the amount of punishment that sinners
must undergo for their sins, particularly atonement in Purgatory, by performing
a deed, such as a pilgrimage or by donating money to the Church. The selling of
indulgences by the Catholic Church was one of the main reasons for the Protestant
Reformation in the 16th century.
The Catholic jubilee was originally to take place every 100 years, but the period
between Catholic jubilees has been regularly shortened over time to 50 years,
33 years, and most recently 25 years, with ‘extraordinary jubilees’ being
granted at any time by popes to the whole flock or only to certain cities or
countries, in this case not necessarily for a full year.
In the
English-speaking world, the word jubilee
also came to be used since the late 14th century to refer to something else,
namely ‘the fiftieth anniversary of an event; the celebration of the completion
of fifty years of reign, of activity, or continuance in any business,
occupation, rank or condition’ (OED). Eventually, different terms came to be
used for different periods: golden jubilee
after 50 years, silver jubilee after
25 (after silver wedding), and diamond jubilee, which was applied to
the celebration in 1897 of the sixtieth year of the reign of Queen Victoria, queen
of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1837-1901) and Empress of
India (since 1876).
More related words
As we have seen,
the English term retirement that we use
now for the period between cessation of one’s work life and death was borrowed
from French retirement in the 16th
century for ‘the action or an act of falling back or retreating from a place or
position’ and ‘the action of receding; movement back or away’, senses that are
now used mostly only in a military context. French had created this word retirement in the late 15th century out
of the verb retirer (source of Eng. retire) and the Latinate noun-forming
suffix ‑ment. Spanish too borrowed
this word too as retiramiento, which
is attested in the late 16th century, but this word has been replaced by retiro, a back-formation of the verb retirar, or by retirada in military contexts (‘retreat’, ‘withdrawal’), a noun derived
from the past participle of the verb retirar.
(Two common expressions with this noun are batirse
en retirada ‘to beat a retreat’ and emprender la retirada ‘to retreat’.)
As we saw, the
Spanish verb retirar is first
attested in the second half of the 16th century and had to come from French,
for French created the verb retirer
in the 12th century from the verb tirer
‘to pull, etc.’ and the prefix re‑
‘back’ and hence its literal meaning was ‘to pull back’. Modern Fr. retirer means ‘to take off/away, remove,
take out, to withdraw’. The reflexive se
retirer, equivalent to Sp. retirarse,
is not used for the sense ‘to retire (from work with a pension)’, but rather with
the sense ‘to withdraw’ and ‘to retire to bed’, for example. Both of these reflexive
verbs can be used however, for the more generic sense of retiring from active life
(cf. Fr. se retirer de la vie active and
Sp. retirarse de la vida activa), which
is something less precise than standard retirement after reaching retirement age
with a pension of some kind.
We do not
know who started referring to retirement as jubilación
and to the action as jubilarse in
Spanish. However, we know that the use of this word for retirement from certain
professions, such as from the military, goes back many centuries in Spanish. We
find the words jubilar and jubilado in Nebrija’s famous late-15th
century dictionaries with the ‘retirement’ sense. It is quite likely that the biblical
notion of jubilee, of ceasing to work the fields after (typically) 50 years of
continuous work, influenced the use of the meanings of jubilar and jubilación since
they were first borrowed (DECH). After all, if a person started their work-life
at 15, after 50 years, they would be 65, an age that very few people reached in
those days. Note, however, that originally these words could also be used with
the other sense, the one that descends from Lat. iūbĭlāre, namely ‘to rejoice’. Thus, in the Quixote the word jubilar is used with both senses. When
the related noun jubilación first
appears in the late 16th century it could also be used with both of these
senses, though the ‘jubilation’ sense came to be pretty much obsolete in Modern
Spanish. The meaning ‘jubilation’ is now expressed in Spanish with the noun júbilo, also first attested in the late
16th century. It is a loanword from Late Latin iūbĭlum, a back-formation from the verb iūbĭlāre, and a synonym in Latin of the derived noun iūbĭlātĭo.
It is
interesting that in Spanish the word jubilación
is used for ‘regular’ jobs, which are traditionally considered less desirable and
less enjoyable, and not so much for liberal professional occupations, such as
doctors and lawyers, from which one tends to retire from active participation without
ceasing to be a member of the profession. Also, practitioners of liberal
professions tend to be better off and less in need of a pension from the business
or the state. The former are the jobs that one may be most jubilant about retiring from and it is quite likely that this idea
was not lost on whoever chose the word jubilación
to refer to retirement, even if the notion of jubilee was also present when this use was first adopted.
There are a
couple more words related to Eng. jubilation
and Sp. jubilación that we should
look at. One is the Spanish adjective cum noun jubilado/a, derived by conversion (without affixes) from the past
participle of the verb jubilar. The
adjective jubilado/a means ‘retired’,
as in Estoy jubilada ‘I am retired’,
just like the identical-looking participle, as in Me he jubilado este año
‘I have retired this year’. This word can also be used as a noun, however, as
Spanish adjectives always can, as in los jubilados
‘retired people, UK pensioners’ or in Mis
padres son jubilados ‘My parents are two retired people (UK two pensioners)’.
The noun jubilado/a is not just an adjective used as a noun as any other adjective
can be used as a noun (e.g. los blancos
‘the white ones’, los grandes ‘the big
ones’), but an actual noun derived by conversion from the adjective jubilado/a, much like for example los ricos ‘the rich, rich people; the rich
ones’ (cf. Part I, Chapter 5, §5.7.3). As with all such nouns that refer to
people, this noun can also be feminine, e.g. Mi madre es jubilada ‘My mother is a pensioner’.
The English equivalent
of the noun jubilado/a in American English
is retiree, pronounced [ɹɪ.ˌtʰaɪ̯.ˈɹi]
or [ɹɪ.ˌtʰaɪ̯.ə.ˈɹi] and meaning ‘one who has retired from active working life’
(American Heritage Dictionary). The OED
tells us that this is an American word, equivalent to pensioner in British English
(‘one who has retired from a business or occupation; a pensioner’, OED). This noun
was created in the middle of the 20th century and it is first attested in writing
in 1945, in the Times-Herald newspaper of Washington 3 Oct. 9/1). The ending ‑ee came into English along with words that
were borrowed from French. In French, this ending was just the past participle ending
‑é fem. ‑ée, cognate with Sp. ‑ado
and ‑ada, respectively, descending from
Lat. ‑ātus and ‑āta. Since the middle of the 19th century, this ending has been used
somewhat productively in American English to create many new words by analogy with
existing ones, which were used in in legal contexts (e.g. donee, lessee, or trustee) and in ‘military and political
jargon’ (e.g. draftee, trainee, or nominee) (American Heritage Dictionary). Along with retiree, among the novel creations, we find
honoree, deportee, escapee,
firee, invitee,
benefactee, biographee, employee, payee, and dischargee, some of which are more common than others.
In Spanish, we
find an adjective jubiloso/a, first
attested in the second half of the 19th century, whose meaning is related to the
sense the noun júbilo has, not that of
the noun jubilación. This adjective
is the equivalent of Eng. jubilant,
which when used to describe a person means ‘joyful’ (Sp. ‘alegre, lleno de
júbilo’). The adjective jubiloso/a
was derived, in Spanish, from the noun júbilo
that we saw in the preceding section by the addition of the adjectival suffix ‑oso/a (jubil-os-o/a). This adjective is quite rare, however, less common than
Eng. jubilant.
This English adjective jubilant
[ˈʤu.bɪ.lənt] is first
attested in the 17th century and is presumably a loanword from (written) Latin jūbilānt-em (nominative iūbilāns), present participle of the
verb iūbĭlāre (OED), though it is also
possible that the term was formed in English out of the Latinate suffix ‑ant borrowed through Old French along with
the many words that contain it, such as assistant,
servant, disinfectant, expectant, and
pleasant. It first appears in Milton’s
Paradise Lost (1667). Note that
French too has a word jubilant (fem. jubilante), that means ‘jubilant, exultant’
(masc. [ʒy.bi.ˈlɑ̃], fem. [ʒy.bi.ˈlɑ̃t]). This adjective is regularly derived
by means of the Latinate suffix ‑ant(e)
from the verb jubiler [ʒy.bi.ˈle], a
cognate of Sp. jubilar that means ‘to
be jubilant, to rejoice, to exult’. However, Fr. jubilant is not attested until the 19th century and it may very
well have come about under the influence of English jubilant.
Eng. pension
~ Sp. pensión
Finally, let
us look at the words Eng. pension ~ Sp.
pension, which are related semantically
to the words we have been looking at in this chapter. In Spanish, the noun jubilación can also be used to refer to
the pension that a retired person receives, typically from the government—though
there are also private pension plans—something akin to the social security pension
retirees receive in the United States, e.g. Con
la jubilación que recibe, apenas puede vivir ‘With the pension she receives,
she can barely survive’ (Clave).
This sense
of jubilación is synonymous with one
of the senses of pensión in Spanish
as well. However, the cognates Eng. pension
~ Sp. pensión are not always used the
same way and are thus not the best of friends, though they are not exactly false
friends either. Eng. pension [ˈpɛn.ʃən]
can indeed be defined as the money one gets after retirement. The
term pension, however, is much more
common in the UK than in the US. In the US, people tend to refer to the money
they receive from the government, whether it be for retirement or disability,
as social security not as pension. In the US, Social Security is ‘a
federal insurance scheme providing benefits for pensioners, the unemployed, and
the disabled’ (COED). The
term pension in the UK, like pension in Spanish, is not used only for
retirement, but also for alimony (maintenance
in the UK), disability (invalidity in
the UK), as well as widow’s pension and even (life) annuities. Thus, Sp. pensión is much like Eng. pension in the UK, since Spanish pensión can refer to pensión de jubiliación (retirement
pension), pensión alimenticia (alimony),
pensión de invalidez (disability), pensión de viudedad or viudez (widow’s pension), and pensión vitalicia (life annuity).
The Spanish word
pensión can also have other meanings.
In Colombia, for instance, it is used for school fees or tuition. More
generally, pensión can refer to the
money one pays for lodging (room and
board, in the UK: board and lodging,
bed and board) in a guesthouse (in
the UK, a boarding house). When the pensión is for students, it translates
into English as student hostel. Derived
terms are pensión completa ‘full
board’ and media pensión ‘demi-pension’
or ‘half board’, in which the main noon-time meal is eaten elsewhere. Related
to this meaning is the use of the noun pensión
with the meaning ‘hostel, boarding house, guesthouse’, as in Juan vive en una pensión ‘Juan lives in a
boarding house’.
The
guesthouse sense of Sp. pensión is
shared by this word’s French cognate pension
[pɑ̃.ˈsjɔ̃], short for pension de
famille ‘guesthouse, boarding house’. It is presumably from this sourceword
that English has borrowed a second word pension
to refer to ‘a small hotel or boarding house in France and other European countries’
(COED). This second word pension is
pronounced differently from the other one. In the UK it is common to pronounce
it [pɒ̃.ˈsjɒ̃], somewhat like the French pronunciation. In the US, it is
typically pronounced closer to the Spanish pronunciation, also with
syllable-final stress, like in French.
The source
of the cognates Eng. pension ~ Sp. pensión, it is the Latin (stem) pēnsiōn‑ (nominative case: pēnsiō; accusative: pēnsiōnem) that means primarily ‘a paying, payment, a term of
payment’ (L&S), a figurative sense derived from the original meaning of
this noun, which was ‘a weighing’, since it is an action noun derived by means of
the noun suffix ‑ĭōn‑ from the stem pēns‑ of the passive participle pēnsus of the verb pendĕre that meant ‘to suspend, hang’ and ‘to weigh’.
From the noun
pension, English has derived the verb
to pension, always with an off prepositional phrase, as in the
phrasal verb to pension off, meaning
‘dismiss someone from employment, typically because of age or ill health, and
pay them a pension’ (OAD) and, referring to things, ‘discard something because
it is too old or no longer wanted’ (OAD), somewhat similar to a sense of Sp. jubilar (see above).
The noun pension is found in a number of
expressions or collocation, such as Eng. pension
plan (also pension scheme in
the UK), which translates into Spanish as plan
de pensiones/jubilación, Eng. pension
fund = Sp. fondo de pensiones,
Eng. to be on a pension or to draw a pension = Sp. cobrar una pensión, and Eng. disability pension = Sp. pensión por discapacidad/invalidez.
In the UK, a
retired person (or actually anyone who receives a pension) is known as a
pensioner, equivalent to the Spanish noun jubilado/a
(for a retired pensioner). The term pensioner
is used in the UK somewhat equivalently to the expression senior citizen in American English. Spanish also has the equivalent
term (a paronym) pensionista. In
Spain, the expression hogar del
pensionista is used for a day centre for the elderly. Note that in the
context of a boarding house, pensionista
translates as resident, lodger, or boarder.
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