The words test and prueba, and related words, Part 9

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

This is Part 9. Go to Part 8

Lat. ĭmprŏbāre and rĕprŏbāre and related words

Lat. ĭmprŏbāre

The Latin verbs ĭmprŏbāre and rĕprŏbāre were used as antonyms of the ‘approve’ sense of the verbs prŏbāre and apprŏbāre that we just saw in the preceding sections. The former was an early classical Latin antonym, formed with the negative prefix in‑ added to prŏbāre, whereas the latter was formed in later, post-Augustan times with the prefix rĕ‑ ‘back; again; etc.’. Curiously they both have very similar meanings. Lewis & Short define these verbs as follows:

• ĭmprŏbāre: ‘to disapprove, blame, condemn, reject’
• rĕprŏbāre: ‘to disapprove, reject, condemn’

Both verbs have been borrowed by both English and Spanish, but without much success, especially in the case of English, as we shall see.

Latin imprŏbāre was formed with the negative prefix in‑, one of two identical Latin prefixes, one which changed to ĭm‑ before p, b or m in Latin.[1] Spanish has borrowed this word from Latin as improbar, but it is a formal word and unknown to most speakers of Spanish. The DLE tells us that it is a synonym of the verb desaprobar (see above), the antonym of aprobar, but only in some dialects of Spanish, specifically those of the countries of Colombia, Honduras, Paraguay and Venezuela. The DCEH doesn’t tell us anything about the source of this word in Spanish other than it is ‘rare’. The verb is conjugated like probar and is thus a stem-changing verb.

The Latin verb imprŏbāre was borrowed into English as well at some point in the mid-17th century, directly from written Latin also. It was borrowed from the Latin verb’s passive participle imprŏbātus, as was often the case, resulting in Eng. improbate. As the OED reports, this verb is obsolete today and rare (always). It was used as a transitive verb with the meaning ‘to disapprove’ and ‘to disallow’, both of which senses are, again, obsolete. Although dictionaries tell us that English, like Spanish, borrowed this verb directly from (written) Latin, it is quite likely that the verb was first borrowed from Latin in French and that Spanish and English then borrowed or rather calqued the word from French. This verb is first attested in French as early as 1370 (LGR). In Modern French, it is spelled improuver and pronounced [ɛ̃pʀuˈve].

Lat. rĕprŏbāre

The other antonym of the ‘approve’ sense of prŏbāre and apprŏbāre according to many experts (and the OED) is rĕprŏbāre, which is attested in Latin much later than imprŏbāre, but with basically the same meaning of ‘to disapprove, reject, condemn’ (L&S). However, not everybody thinks that this verb is derived from prŏbāre by means of the prefix rĕ‑. One reason is that Latin already had an antonym, namely imprŏbāre. Also, it is very unusual for the Latin prefix rĕ‑ to have a negative meaning, this being one of very few words in which rĕ‑ has the meaning ‘not’, equivalent to in‑. The original meaning of rĕ‑ is ‘back’ or ‘backwards’, but it acquired new senses as it was used in new words, the most common one being ‘again’. In a few cases it had the meaning of undoing of an action, equivalent to the second un‑ prefix in English in verbs like undo, cf. Lat. recingĕre ‘to ungird’. Least commonly, rĕ‑ had the negative meaning that it seems to have in rĕprŏbāre (cf. OED, re‑) and all other such verbs are very old words, from archaic Latin. For these and a few other reasons, some have argued that this second antonym of prŏbāre was not derived from this verb originally but has another, more unorthodox source and only later did it come to be used as an antonym of prŏbāre. Corominas & Pascual’s DCEH argues that rĕprŏbāre, which doesn’t appear until rather late in Latin, has to be a Vulgar Latin deformation of rĕprŏbrāre (with two r’s), which was itself a deformation of opprōbrāre ‘to reproach, taunt, upbraid’ (L&S), a verb derived from the prefix ob ‘towards; against’ and the noun prŏbrum ‘a shameful or disgraceful act; abuse, insult, reproachful language, a reproach, libel’ (L&S).[2]

Be that as it may, rĕprŏbāre is now seen by most sources as a synonym of imprŏbāre and thus a second antonym of prŏbāre, from which some think it is derived. Spanish has borrowed the verb reprobar from Latin, which is not as common as aprobar, but is used as a synonym of desaprobar, the antonym of aprobar that we saw earlier. Its main meaning is not just the antonym of aprobar but something rather stronger, ‘to condemn’, and it applied primarily to a person’s behavior or attitude, not to a person, as in Repruebo el favoritismo ‘I disapprove of any kind of favoritism’ (OSD). We already saw earlier the second meaning that this verb has in American dialects of Spanish, namely ‘to fail’ (a course or exam)’, as a synonym of suspender, in other words, the antonym of one of the modern senses of aprobar, e.g. Me reprobaron en física ‘I failed physics’ (OSD).

English too has descendants of Lat. rĕprŏbāre and not just one, but two. First, English borrowed the verb reprove in the early 14th century from Old French repruver (1080), cf. Middle French reprouver ‘reproach, criticize, blame’ (1120) and Modern French réprouver ‘to condemn, to disapprove of; to reprobate, to damn’ (LC).

Eng. reprove, pronounced [ɹəˈpʰɹuv] or [ɹiˈpʰɹuv],  is not a common, everyday word. As for its meaning, dictionaries differ somewhat as to how they define it. Most agree that it means ‘to scold or correct usually gently or with kindly intent’ (MWC) or ‘to criticize or correct (someone) usually in a gentle way’ (MWALD). In this use, Eng. reprove is used primarily with people as direct objects. Some dictionaries do mention that ideas or behaviors can also be reproved, though this use is less common. One dictionary defines this second meaning as ‘to express disapproval of : censure. it is not for me to reprove popular taste — D. W. Brogan’ (MWC).

English also borrowed the Latin verb rĕprŏbāre directly from Latin, in the mid-15th century. As usual, English borrowed this Latin verb using its passive participle rĕprŏbātus, turning it into reprobate [ˈɹɛpɹəˌbeɪ̯t]. This verb’s main meaning is ‘to disapprove of’ and ‘to condemn’, and some dictionaries tell us that it is archaic (e.g. COED). Some dictionaries are more specific about the meaning of this verb. For instance, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate tells us it means ‘to condemn strongly as unworthy, unacceptable, or evil’ (MWC). This verb has been used in Christian theology with the sense ‘to abandon to eternal damnation. Used of God’ (AHD).

Related words: Lat. ĭmprŏbus and rĕprŏbus

Finally, we should mention that associated with the verbs ĭmprŏbāre and rĕprŏbāre, antonyms of the verbs prŏbāre (and its partial synonym) apprŏbāre, Latin also had analogous antonyms of the adjective, prŏbus, that these verbs are derived from, namely: ĭmprŏbus and Late Latin rĕprŏbus.

The adjective ĭmprŏbus (masc. ĭmprŏbus, fem. ĭmprŏba, neut. ĭmprŏbum), antonym of prŏbus formed by the negative prefix ĭn‑, meant ‘not good, bad, wicked, reprobate, abandoned, vile, base, impious, bold, shameless, wanton’ (CTL). This adjective is obviously related to the verb imprŏbāre that we just saw. English borrowed it in the late 15th century as improbe from French improbe, which was a 15th century loan from written Latin. Eng. improbe is now obsolete and even in the 15th century it was a rare word. Its meaning was ‘a wicked person’ (OED). Since this is an obsolete word, regular dictionaries do not list it.

Spanish also borrowed this word as ímprobo/a, most likely from French as well, since its first appearance in a dictionary was in Tesoro de las dos lenguas francesa y española by César Oudin (1607). This adjective is still in use in Spanish, though it is obviously quite formal and fancy and not an everyday word. When applied to a person, its meaning is ‘corrupt, unprincipled, dishonest’ but when applied to work, a task or effort, it means ‘arduous, laborious’ or ‘enormous, huge, etc.’, e.g. Tuve que hacer un esfuerzo ímprobo para acabar a tiempo ‘I had to make a superhuman effort to finish on time’ (Vox).

In addition, Late Latin also created the adjective rĕprŏbus/a/um presumably by adding the prefix rĕ‑ to the adjective prŏbus/a/um. Its meaning was somewhat more specific, namely ‘false, spurious’ (L&S). That adjective is obviously related morphologically to the verb rĕprŏbāre. Spanish borrowed this adjective as réprobo/a for use primarily in a Catholic religious context. This word is primarily an adjective, though it can be used as a noun as well. The Academies’ dictionary (DLE) gives four senses for this word, two that are religious and two that are not. The first two are ‘condemned to eternal suffering’ and ‘condemned for religious heterodoxy’. The non-religious senses are ‘removed from a group for non-religious reasons’ and ‘wicked, evil’ (DLE).[3] Obviously, this Latin word was borrowed with the meaning the word had in Late Latin, but rather with an adjectival meaning related to that of the verb rĕprŏbāre as this verb had come to be used in Christianity and Ecclesiastical (Church) Latin, with the meaning ‘condemn’.

English too has borrowed something very similar to this adjective but with a twist, namely that the English equivalent of Sp. réprobo is a paronym (semi-cognate) with an identical spelling and curiously also pronunciation as the verb reprobate that we just saw (one expects such pairs to have different pronunciations, as with separate and estimate, cf. Part I, Chapter 5, §5.13.2.1). The meanings of non-verbal reprobate are very similar to those of Sp. réprobo/a. Most dictionaries give a religious sense, such as ‘rejected by God and without hope of salvation’ if used as an adjective and ‘one who is predestined to damnation’ if used as a noun; and a non-religious sense, such as ‘morally unprincipled; shameless’ if used as an adjective and ‘a morally unprincipled person’ if used as a noun (all four senses are from AHD). Again, some dictionaries, such as COED, tell us that the religious senses were used in the Calvinist Protestant Christian tradition and that they are archaic today, that is not in current use.

Go to Part 10

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[1] Of the two Latin prefixes ĭn‑, one meant ‘into, in, on, upon’ and it descended from Proto-Indo-European en‑ ‘in’. It is identical to the Latin preposition ĭn, which is the source of Sp. en. The other prefix ĭn‑ meant ‘not’ and it descended from Proto-Indo-European ne‑ ‘not’. This prefix was cognate with Greek an‑ (as in the etymon of the word anarchy) and English un‑ (as in the word unimportant), cf. Part I, Chapter 8.

[2] Cf. the derived noun opprōbrĭum ‘a reproach, scandal, disgrace, dishonor, opprobrium’, source of Eng. opprobrium and Sp. oprobio or oprobrio. The cognates Eng. reproach ~ Sp. reproche come from Fr. reproche, which descends from Vulgar Lat. *repropium, which according to DCEH is a blend of the synonyms opprobrium and reprobatio (DCEH).

[3] 1. The DLE says: ‘adj. Condenado a las penas eternas. U. t. c. s.  2. adj. Dicho de una persona: Condenada por su heterodoxia religiosa. U. t. c. s.  3. adj. Dicho de una persona: Apartada de la convivencia por razones distintas de las religiosas. U. t. c. s.  4. adj. malvado. U. t. c. s.’ (U. t. c. s. means úsase también como sustantivo ‘also used as a noun’.

The words test and prueba, and related words, Part 8

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

This is Part 8. Go to Part 7

Other words containing the root prŏb-

Eng. approve ~ Sp. aprobar and related words

The cognate verbs Eng. approve ~ Sp. aprobar are fairly close friends (have very similar meanings), but there are some differences in their meanings and uses, as we shall see. Ultimately they both come from Lat. apprŏbāre ‘to assent to as good, to regard as good, to approve, to favor’ (L&S), a verb related to the verb prŏbāre from which it differs by having the prefix ad‑ ‘to’, which changed to ap‑ before a root that started with p‑: ad + prŏbāre Ž adprŏbāre, apprŏbāre. As we can see, the meaning of this verb is the same as one of the meanings of the verb prŏbāre, the second one that we listed above.

English borrowed this word through Old French aprover around the year 1300 (cf. Modern French approuver [apʀuˈve]). As we mentioned in the preceding section, there is a second, but rare, verb approve in English that is unrelated to this one. The second verb approve has a similar origin as and shares a root with the verb improve that we mentioned earlier.[1]

One English verb approve, the one that descends from Lat. apprŏbāre, has two main, related meanings. One, is a transitive use of this verb (with a direct object) and it means ‘[to] officially accept as satisfactory’ (COED) or ‘to officially accept a plan, proposal etc.’ (LDCE), as in The conference approved a proposal for a referendum (LDCE). We will refer to this meaning as the ‘approve before the fact by a competent authority’ sense.

The second sense is an intransitive one (without a direct object), typically with an object with the preposition of, an ‘of prepositional phrase’, which can be defined as ‘[to] believe that someone or something is good or acceptable’ (COED) or ‘to think that someone or something is good, right, or suitable’ (LDCE), as in I approve of what you’re doing. We will refer to this sense as the ‘approve after the fact by an interested party’. Note that the of-prepositional phrase complement may be left out if understood, as in My parents (don’t) approve.

There is antonym of this second sense of the verb approve (but not the first one), namely disapprove. According to the OED, this verb was created (derived) in English from the verb approve and the negative prefix dis‑ in the mid-16th century. However, there is a French verb désapprouver that is attested a few years earlier, in 1535 (LGR), so English may very well have borrowed or calqued the verb disapprove from French. If so, the verb was formed in French from the verb approuver and the Latinate prefix des‑ (equivalent to dis‑ in English). What is clear is that these antonyms do not descend from a Latin verb but were rather created in the modern languages, since Latin never attached the prefix dĭs‑ to the verb apprŏbāre.

Eng. approve also has a few additional senses that are now rare or archaic, according to the more complete dictionaries. One of them is the sense ‘display, exhibit, make proof of’ (SOED), which, interestingly, is similar to one of the senses of prove. This shows the close historical connection between these two verbs, one that goes back to their Latin ancestors, since as we saw there is a partial overlap of meanings between the two Latin verbs, prŏbāre and apprŏbāre.

In Spanish, aprobar is attested in the mid-13th century (with the spelling aprovar). At the time, this verb seems to have been solely a synonym or variant of (some of the senses of) the verb probar, much like Eng. approve could in the past be a synonym of prove, as we just saw (DCEH). The word aprobar is not attested with the current meaning (similar to the Latin and English ones) until the 15th century, perhaps under the influence of French approuver and/or of Latin apprŏbāre.

The main meaning of Sp. aprobar is the same as the first meaning of Eng. approve, namely ‘approve before the fact by a competent authority’, as in El comité aprobó el plan ‘The committee approved the plan’. Note, however, that if the thing that is being approved is not explicitly mentioned and it is merely understood, then Spanish would not use this verb, like English would approve, but rather expressions such as dar su aprobación, dar el visto bueno, or estar de acuerdo. In English, it is possible for the verb approve to be used intransitively with the first sense, as in We asked to leave and she approved, but this is not possible in Spanish.

The second sense of Eng. approve, the ‘approve after the fact by an interested party’ sense, does not typically translate into Spanish with the verb aprobar. To translate that sense of the English verb, Spanish would use other expressions such as gustar or ver con buenos ojos, as in My parents don’t approve of my friends = Sp. A mis padres no les gustan (caen bien) mis amigos, or They didn't approve of me smoking = Sp. No veían con buenos ojos que yo fumara. Some dictionaries say that aprobar may be used to translate the ‘approve after the fact by an interested party’ sense of Eng. approve, but that is arguably not the most common way to express that meaning in Spanish.

We mentioned that English had an antonym of approve, namely disapprove, for the second sense of that verb. Spanish too has a cognate of that verb, namely desaprobar. This verb, curiously, has a very similar meaning to its English cognate, meaning that it has a ‘disapprove after the fact by an interested party’. The antonym of the ‘disapprove before the fact by a competent authority’ sense, on the other hand, would be rechazar, denegar, oponerse or disentir, but not desaprobar. As we saw earlier, this verb common to English, French and Spanish was probably derived in French first, as désapprouver (1535), from where it was borrowed by English as disapprove and by Spanish as desaprobar. Remember that in Latin, the antonyms of apprŏbāre were imprŏbāre and rĕprŏbāre, but these verbs have not resulted in English and Spanish verbs that are the antonyms of Eng. approve and Sp. aprobar (but see below).

So, we saw that Spanish aprobar shares one sense with Eng. approve, but not the other one of this latter verb’s senses. Similarly, Sp. aprobar has a second sense that English approve does not have. Actually, Spanish aprobar has two additional, closely related senses, which are typically used in academic settings. The two senses are the following, shown here with definitions, paraphrases, and examples:

• aprobar = dar un aprobado en (‘to allow to go through an examination or academic course successfully’), e.g. El profesor aprobó a los alumnos (en el examen/en el curso) ‘The teacher/professor passed the students (on the test/the class)’; the DLE defines this sense as ‘declarar hábil y competente a alguien’
• aprobar = sacar un aprobado en (‘‘to undergo an examination or an academic course with favorable results’), e.g. El alumno aprobó el examen/la asignatura ‘The student passed the test/the subject’; or intransitively El alumno aprobó en matemáticas ‘The student passed math (class)’; the DLE defines this sense as ‘obtener la calificación de aprobado en una asignatura o examen’

The Spanish verb pasar, lit. ‘to pass’, can be used as a synonym of these two senses of aprobar (note that Eng. pass can also be equivalent). The antonym (opposite) of both of these related senses of the verb aprobar is suspender ‘to flunk’ (= dar/sacar un suspenso) in northern Spain and the Caribbean, and, in southern Spain and much of Spanish America, reprobar (= dar/sacar un reprobado) (see below).

Let us end this section with a mention of the nouns related to (and derived from) the cognate verbs Eng. approve ~ Sp. aprobar, namely Eng. approval ≈ Sp. aprobación. These two nouns could not cognates, but rather semi-cognates or paronyms, since they have different endings: Eng. ‑al vs. Sp. ‑ación. (Although they are not cognates, they are definitely cognate or related, since they share the root and the stem, cf. Part I, Chapter 1.) Eng. approval was formed, in English, from the verb approve and the Latinate suffix ‑al that derives nouns (e.g. refusal, denial, etc., cf. Part I, Chapter 8, §8.5.3.2). This noun was created in the late 17th century but it was rare until the 19th century, having to compete with its synonym approvance, which is now archaic. Sp. aprobación, on the other hand, is a loanword from Lat. apprŏbātĭo ‘an approving, allowing, assenting to, approbation, acquiescence (most frequently in Cicero)’ (L&S). This Latin noun was derived from the verb apprŏbāre by means of the suffix ‑ĭōn‑ that attached itself to the passive participle stem of the verb, apprŏbā‑t‑ in this case, to form nouns.

As for the meaning of these two paronyms, they both refer to the action or result of approving. However, just like the related verbs are not fully equivalent in meaning, so too the nouns differ somewhat as to how they are used. Sp. aprobación is more about ‘approval before the fact by a competent authority’, and it is synonymous with consentimiento, conformidad. In addition, there are a few other synonyms of this word that can be used for that sense as well as for the ‘approval after the fact by an interested party’ sense, such as visto bueno, beneplácito, and even gusto.

The antonym of Eng. approval is disapproval, a noun formed in English in the mid-17th century as an antonym of approval. In Spanish, the antonym of aprobación is desaprobación. This word could have come from French disapprobation, a word attested in that language in the late 18th century. Sp. desaprobación, however, is somewhat more formal and less common than its English counterpart disapproval. Eng. disapproval would usually be translated as rechazo, condena, or disconformidad, not as desaprobación.

Note that English also has a cognate of Sp. aprobación, namely Eng. approbation, a somewhat formal word meaning ‘official praise or approval’ (LDCE). This is either a direct late-14th century loan from written Latin or else it was borrowed through French, which had borrowed this word from written Latin as early as the mid-13th century (first attested in 1265).

Go to Part 9

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[1] The second word approve in English is a legal term. It can also be spelled approw. Like improve, it is an Old French loan derived from the root prou ‘profit’ (see previous footnote). Its meaning is ‘to make profit to oneself of (e.g. land), by increasing the value or rent. especially Said of the lord of a manor enclosing or appropriating to his own advantage common land, as permitted by the Statute of Merton (20 Hen. III. c. iv.).’ (OED).

The words test and prueba, and related words, Part 7

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

This is Part 7. Go to Part 6

Other words with descendants of the root prŏb-

Introduction

In addition to the cognate verbs Eng. prove ~ Sp. probar and the cognate nouns Eng. proof and probe on one hand and Sp. prueba on the other, there are a number of words in English and Spanish that descend from Latin words that contained the same Latin root prŏb‑ that is at the heart of all these words, a root that is spelled prov‑ in English and prob‑ in (Modern) Spanish. Most of these words have a cognate in the other language, though not all of them do.

Note that not all words that have what looks like the root prov‑ in English come from this source. Most notably, Eng. improve (= Sp. mejorar), which looks like it should be related to the verb prove, is not related to (cognate with) this word at all since it does not descent from a word containing the root prŏb‑. Rather, it comes from Anglo-Norman emprouwer (among other spellings) that meant (among other things) ‘to make a profit’. This verb is related to medieval Latin inpruare or empruare found in British sources in the 12-14th centuries with meanings such as ‘to enrich oneself’, ‘to make a profit’, etc. (OED).[1] There is also a homonym of the verb approve in English that is unrelated to Lat. prŏbāre that used to be a variant of Eng. improve, as we shall see.

There weren’t many Latin words that contained the root prŏb‑ besides (1) the adjective prŏbus/a, the verb prŏbāre ‘to approve, test, etc.’ (source of Sp. probar and Eng. prove), and the noun prŏba ‘proof; test, trial’, source of Sp. prueba and Eng. proof and probe. Remember that the verb was derived from the adjective and the noun from the verb.

• adjective prŏbus/a ‘good, proper, serviceable, excellent, superior, able’, ‘well-behaved, well-conducted’, cf. Sp. probo/a
• verb prŏbāre ‘to try, test, examine, inspect, judge’, ‘to esteem as good, serviceable, fit, just, etc.; to be satisfied with, to approve’, ‘to represent or show a thing to be good, serviceable, fit, right, etc., to make acceptable, to recommend’, ‘to make a thing credible, to show, prove, demonstrate’; cf. Sp. probar, Eng. prove
• noun prŏba ‘a proof’, ‘a test, trial’; cf. Sp. prueba, Eng. proof, probe

We can divide the remaining Latin prŏb‑ words into those derived directly from the adjective prŏbus/a, those derived from the verb prŏbāre by means of prefixes, and those derived from the verb prŏbāre by means of suffixes. The following words are derived from the adjective prŏbus/a:

• adjective ĭmprŏbus/a (antonym of prŏbus/a) ‘of bad quality, bad, poor, inferior (rare; “mostly post-Aug.)’, enormous, monstrous, excessive’, etc. (L&S); cf. Sp. ímprobo, Eng. (obsolete) improbe
• adverb prŏbē ‘rightly, well, properly, correctly, fitly, etc.’ (CTL)
• Late Latin adjective rĕprŏbus/a ‘false, spurious’ (L&S), formed with the prefix rĕ‑ ‘back, again, against, intensive’; cf. Sp. réprobo/a, Eng. reprobate
• adverb prŏbĭter (pre-classical) ‘well, fitly, capitally (ante-classical)’, ‘well, fitly, thoroughly, very, very much, greatly, finely, capitally, bravely’ (L&S)

Then, there were several verbs Latin that were formed as extensions of the verb prŏbāre by addition of prefixes, a very common type of derivation in this language:

• adprŏbāre or apprŏbāre: formed with ad‑ ‘to’; meaning: ‘to assent to as good, to regard as good, to approve, to favor’ (L&S); cf. Sp. aprobar, Eng. approve
• imprŏbāre: formed with the negative prefix in‑ ‘not’ as the antonym of apprŏbāre; meaning: ‘to disapprove, blame, condemn, reject’ (L&S); cf. Sp. improbar, Eng. (obs.) improbate
• rĕprŏbāre: formed in Late Latin with the prefix rĕ‑ ‘back; again’ and used as a synonym of imprŏbāre, the opposite of apprŏbāre; meaning: ‘to disapprove, reject, condemn’ (L&S); cf. Sp. reprobar, Eng. reprove and reprobate, and Fr. réprouver
• comprŏbāre: formed with the prefix con‑ ‘with, together, completely’; meaning: ‘to approve wholly of something, to assent to, sanction, acknowledge’ (L&S); cf. Sp. comprobar, Eng. (obsolete) comprobate

Finally, there are three more words that were also derived from the verb prŏbāre:

• noun prŏbātĭo ‘a trying, proving’, ‘a trial, inspection, examination’; ‘Approbation, approval, assent’, ‘Proof, demonstration (post-Aug.)’; cf. Sp. (rare) probación, Eng. probation
•  noun prŏbātor ‘an approver (rare but classical)’; ‘a trier, examiner (ecclesiastical Latin)’
• noun prŏbātōrĭa ‘a letter of recommendation (from the emperor), a certificate of qualification (postclass.)’
• adjective probātus, converted from the identical passive participle,  ‘approved, acceptable, pleasing, agreeable’, ‘tried, tested, proved, approved, good, excellent’; cf. German probat ‘appropriate; suitable; proven’
• adjective prŏbābĭlis ‘that may be assumed, believed, or proved; likely, credible, probable’ and ‘worthy of approval, pleasing, agreeable, acceptable, commendable, laudable, good, fit’; cf. Eng. probable, Sp. probable, Fr. probable
• adjective imprŏbābĭlis, antonym of prŏbābĭlis, formed with the negative prefix in‑, which meant ‘not deserving of approbation, objectionable, exceptionable’ (L&S); cf. Sp. improbable ‘unlikely, improbable’, Eng. improbable
• noun prŏbābĭlĭtas ‘probability, credibility (classical)’; Sp. probabilidad, Eng. probability
• adverb prŏbābĭlĭter ‘probably, credibly’

In the following sections we will examine all of these words that have made it into English and/or Spanish, as well as some that have been derived in the modern languages out of some of these words inherited from Latin.

Go to Part 8

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[1] The verb improve is first attested in English in the late 15th century with the meaning ‘to increase (one’s income); to spend or invest (money) so as to make a profit; esp. to lend at interest’ (OED), a meaning that is now obsolete. It came from and Anglo-French word variously spelled as emprover, emprower, empruer, enprower, enprouwer, or enpruer and meaning ‘to make good use of (a thing) (end of the 13th cent. or earlier), to enclose and cultivate (wasteland or unoccupied land) in order to make it profitable (end of the 13th cent. or earlier), to make profits, to enrich (oneself) (c1300 or earlier, reflexive), to better one’s position (early 14th cent. or earlier, reflexive)’ (OED). This verb is first attested in English in the late 13th century. This verb was formed with the prefix en‑ and the noun prou ‘profit’, descended from Vulgar Lat. prode ‘advantageous, profitable’. In the 17th century, the spelling was fixed as the current one, spelled with a ‑v‑, and not a ‑w‑ as one would have expected, and the pronunciation followed that spelling (OED). The transitive ‘make better’ meaning is from the early 17th century and the intransitive one, ‘get better’, from the first part of the 18th century.

Also unrelated to Lat. aprŏbāre are, of course, the words derived from Eng. improve, namely the adjective improvable (Sp. mejorable) and the noun improvement (Sp. mejora).

The words test and prueba, and related words, Part 6

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

This is Part 6. Go to Part 5

Sp. prueba and Eng. proof and probe

Sp. prueba [ˈpɾu̯eβa]] is the noun associated to the verb probar. It is already attested in the 13th century (Berceo). The noun comes from the Late Latin first declension feminine noun prŏba, which at first meant ‘proof’ and later, in Late Latin, also ‘test, trial’ (genitive wordform: prŏbae, accusative wordform: prŏbam). These are all meanings that Sp. prueba, the descendant of Lat. prŏba, still has, since the most basic meaning of Sp. prueba is ‘the action and result of probar’ and probar means ‘to prove’ as well as ‘to test/try’ (DLE: ‘acción y efecto de probar’).

If the verb prŏbāre (prŏb‑ā‑re) was derived from the adjective prŏbus/a (prŏb‑us/a) in classical times, as we saw, the noun prŏba (prŏb‑a) seems to have been derived later on (in post-classical times) by back-formation from the Latin verb prŏbāre. In both cases, the derivation took place without the use of derivational affixes, just by changing the inflectional suffixes, a type of derivation known as conversion or zero-derivation (cf. Part I, Chapter 5).

Classical Latin	from adjective prŏbus (fem. prŏba)	Ž	verb prŏbāre
Post-classical Latin	from verb prŏbāre	Ž	noun prŏba

This noun prueba is attested in writing very early on in Spanish, since the end of the 12th century. It was at first spelled prueva, with the letter 〈v〉, and in the 13th century we find it spelled prueba, with the letter 〈b〉, as in the Latin etymon (source word). The reasons for the changes in the spelling were seen in the preceding section, and the fact that Sp. prueba has the diphthong ‑ue‑ was also explained by the fact that Latin short ‑ŏ‑ always changed to ‑ue‑ in Old Spanish when stressed, but only in patrimonial words, not in words that were borrowed from written Latin (cf. Part I, Chapter 1).

The word prueba is polysemous, just like the verb probar is, and it can be translated into English by different words depending on the sense. The following are the main senses for this word in Modern Spanish:

(1)  the ‘proof’ sense: just like the first sense of the verb probar was ‘to prove’, the first sense of the noun prueba is ‘proof’, as in No hay pruebas de que estuviera aquí ‘There is no proof that she was here’

(2)  the ‘evidence’ sense: this sense is very closely related to the previous one but it is used in legal contexts, where una prueba means ‘a piece of evidence’ and falta de pruebas means ‘lack of evidence’; in fact, if it weren’t for the fact that English uses two different words for each of these senses, from the perspective of Spanish, the two senses could be seen as one and the same

(3)  the ‘test’ sense: we saw this sense earlier in the chapter; in academic and many other contexts it translates as test, e.g. prueba de matemáticas ‘the math test’, prueba de aptitud ‘aptitude test’, prueba de alcoholemia ‘Breathalyzer test’, prueba de(l) embarazo ‘pregnancy test’, prueba de paternidad ‘paternity test’; in theater and cinema, however, prueba translates as audition (in cinema, also screen test)

(4)  the ‘event’ sense, used in sports, which translates as event or race, depending on the event, e.g. la prueba de los cien metros lisos ‘the hundred-meter race/event’, prueba de obstáculos ‘obstacle race’, prueba contrarreloj ‘timed race’

The noun prueba is also found in many common expressions, which are either collocations or idioms, depending on how transparent they are (cf. Part I, Chapter 6). The following are the most common ones:

·    hacer la prueba ‘to try, give it a shot’

·    periodo de prueba ‘probationary/trial period’

·    piloto de pruebas ‘test pilot’

·    vuelo de pruebas ‘test flight’

·    estar en (fase de) pruebas ‘to be on trial (a trial period)’

·    estar a prueba ‘to be on a trial period’

·    poner/someter a prueba ‘to put to the test’

·    a prueba de ‘-proof’, e.g. a prueba de agua ‘waterproof’, a prueba de balas ‘bulletproof’

·    sala de pruebas ‘fitting room’, ‘testing/trial room’

·    hacer pruebas ‘to do trial tests’

·    prueba de compra ‘proof of purchase’

·    prueba de laboratorio ‘lab test’

The Spanish noun prueba is cognate with two English nouns: proof and probe. Eng. proof [ˈpʰɹuf] is an early 13th century loanword from Old French preuve or prueve ‘proof, test, experience’ (Modern French preuve [ˈpʀœv]), which descended patrimonially from Late Latin prŏba, the source of Sp. prueba (see above). After the loss of the final vowel sound in the English word, the ‑v‑ [v], which was now word-final, was devoiced to ‑f [f], a very common sound change in many languages, resulting in a prove [ˈpʰɹuv] – proof [ˈpʰɹuf] sound alternation similar to the one seen in the pair believe ~ belief (cf. Part I, Chapter 7). Many other languages have descendants of this Latin noun. In the Romance languages, the word is patrimonial, that is, descended orally and uninterruptedly from Latin, e.g. Catalan prova, Italian prova (earlier pruova), and Portuguese prova. Other, non-Romance languages have borrowed this word as well, e.g. Dutch proef, English proof, German Probe, and Swedish prova.

In the 19th century, English developed the verb to proof from the noun proof by conversion. This verb has several meanings, such as ‘make waterproof’ (Sp. impermeabilizar), and, since the 1950’s, ‘proofread (a text)’ (i.e. short for proofread) (Sp. corregir pruebas de) (COED). A third, less common sense of the verb to proof is ‘make a proof of (a printed work, engraving, etc.)’ (COED).

Eng. probe [ˈpʰɹoʊ̯b] is first of all a noun that can mean either ‘a careful examination or investigation of something’ or ‘a thin, long instrument that is used especially for examining parts of the body’ (MWALD). It can also mean ‘space probe’, since probe can be short form for (a clipping of) the phrase space probe, ‘a device that is used to obtain information from outer space and send it back to Earth’ (MWALD).

The noun probe is an early 15th century loanword from Late Latin proba, the same word that gave us Sp. prueba and Eng. proof (through Old French). This time English borrowed the word not through French, but directly from (written) Latin. The original meanings of this English word were ‘an examination, test’, as well as ‘instrument for exploring wounds, etc.’. Both of these meanings are still current.

The three meanings of the English noun probe translates into Spanish, respectively, as investigación, sonda, and sonda espacial. The Spanish noun sonda is a loanword from Fr. sonde [ˈsɔ̃d] ‘sounding-line, sounding’, a 12th century loanword presumably from a Germanic language and related to the Proto-Germanic word *sundą ‘swimming’ and ‘strait, sound’, which is cognate with the English noun sound ‘a narrow stretch of water forming an inlet or connecting two larger bodies of water’ and perhaps also with the verb to sound meaning ‘ascertain (the depth of water in the sea, a lake, etc.) by means of a line or pole or using sound echoes’ (COED). The theory that these words are related to a Latin verb subundare that is only attested once in Latin and which contains the Latin morphemes sub ‘under’ and unda ‘wave’, but this theory has been discredited.

English also borrowed the word sonde [ˈsɒnd] from French in the mid-20th century, but with a narrower meaning: ‘an instrument probe that automatically transmits information about its surroundings underground, under water, in the atmosphere, etc.’ (OD).

English has turned the noun probe into a verb by conversion, i.e. without making any other changes to the word, such as adding affixes. The result is the verb to probe. This conversion happened in the mid-16th century. Originally, its meaning was ‘to pierce, penetrate, or examine with a probe, esp. something sharp, in order to test or explore’ but also ‘to search (a person’s body) closely for something concealed’ (OED). Dictionaries divide its meanings today as having a physical sense and one more figurative one. One dictionary defines them as ‘physically explore or examine’ and ‘enquire into closely’ (COED). Another one is more specific: ‘to ask questions in order to find out secret or hidden information about somebody/something’ and ‘to touch, examine or look for something, especially with a long thin instrument’ (OALD).

As for how to translate the verb to probe into Spanish, in a medical context, it translates as sondar. In other contexts, it can be translated as examinar, explorar or indagar, for the ‘examine’ sense of the verb, but also tantear or sondear for the ‘sound out’ sense regarding persons, motives, or reasons. The verbs sondar and sondear seem to have been derived from the noun sonda. In medicine, Sp. sondar means ‘to catheterize’ or ‘to sound, probe’; in mining, ‘to test drill a hole into’; in navigation, ‘to sound, plumb, take soundings of’; and in space exploration and meteorology, ‘to explore, probe’. Sp. sondear can be just an alternative form of sondar, but it is also used in recent times with the figurative senses of ‘to sound out, test’, as in the phrase sondear la opinión pública ‘to sound out public opinion’ and sondear el terreno ‘to spy out the land’, ‘see how the land lies’ (Collins).

Go to Part 7

The words test and prueba, and related words, Part 5

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

This is Part 5. Go to Part 4

Sp. probar and Eng. prove

As we have seen, the Spanish verb probar and the related noun prueba are the main ways to translate the English verb test and the related noun test, respectively, so let us take a look at these two related words. In this section, we look at the verb probar and in the following one, at the noun prueba.

As we mentioned in the preceding section, the Spanish verb probar, which is a cognate of Eng. prove, is quite polysemous. Both Sp. probar and Eng. prove descend ultimately from Lat. prŏbāre, a verb that was rare in Classical Latin, not being found in Caesar or Cicero for instance, but which took off in later times and was very frequent in Ecclesiastical (Church) Latin during the Middle Ages, for instance. Its principal parts were prŏbo, prŏbāre, prŏbāvi, prŏbātus (cf. Part I, Chapter 8). As for its meaning polysemous verb with several (related) meanings (senses) and usages not all of which have survived in the verb’s reflexes in the modern languages. This verb had at least the following senses (from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary):

• ‘to try, test, examine, inspect, judge’
• ‘to esteem as good, serviceable, fit, just, etc.; to be satisfied with, to approve’
• ‘to represent or show a thing to be good, serviceable, fit, right, etc., to make acceptable, to recommend’, ‘to make a thing credible, to show, prove, demonstrate’

The verb prŏbāre was derived from the Latin adjective prŏbus/a that meant ‘good, proper, serviceable, excellent, superior, able’ and which was often used with moral connotations and thus can also mean ‘upright, honest, honorable, excellent, virtuous, etc.’ (L&S). This adjective has been borrowed into Spanish in recent times as probo/a with the meaning ‘honest, reputable, upright’, the morality sense of the Latin source word or etymon, though it is rather formal and rare. It was first added to the Academy’s dictionary (DRAE) in 1852. The Latin adjective prŏbus/a has been reconstructed as coming from Proto-Indo-European *probʰwo- ‘being in front’, from the prefix *pro‑ (extended form of per‑) ‘forward’ and the root *bʰuH‑ ‘to be’.

Actually, the Latin abstract noun derived from the adjective prŏbus, namely prŏbĭtātem (nominative wordform: prŏbĭtas; prŏb‑ĭ‑tāt‑em) appears to have been borrowed into Spanish even before the adjective, as probidad, since it is found in the DRAE already in 1803 as a synonym of honradez ‘honesty’. Interestingly, this noun was also borrowed in English, in the early 15th century, as probity [ˈpʰɹoʊ̯bəɾi], with the meaning ‘honesty and decency’, according to one dictionary (COED), or ‘adherence to the highest principles and ideals : uprightness’ according to another (MWC).

The Spanish verb probar, on the other hand, is a patrimonial word, descended by word of mouth from spoken (Vulgar) Latin and it is found already in early writings such as the Cid (circa 1200), for instance (cf. Part I, Chapter 1 and 9). Reflexes of this Latin verb are also found in other western Romance languages: Catalan provar, Portuguese provar (Port. [pɾu.ˈvaɾ] or Br. [pɾo.ˈva(ʁ)]), French prouver ([pʁu.ˈve]), Italian provare ([pɾo.ˈva.ɾɛ]). The verb has also been borrowed by other non-Romance European languages, e.g. English probe and prove (see below), Dutch proberen and proeven, German probieren, proben, and prüfen, Hungarian próbál, and Irish promh. 

Sp. probar is a stem-changing verb, that is, one in which the root vowel ‑o‑ changes to ‑ue‑ whenever it is stressed, as in the present tense form pruebo ‘I try/test/taste, etc.’ (but not probemos ‘we try/test/taste, etc.’, since in this form the ‑o‑ is not stressed). That is because a stressed short Latin ‑ŏ‑ always changed to ‑ue‑ in Old Spanish in patrimonial words (cf. Part I, Chapter 10). As for the spelling, this verb used to be spelled with the letter 〈v〉 in Old Spanish, as provar, much like in most other Romance languages, but the spelling was changed to a 〈b〉 under the influence of the written Latin etymon. (Both letters, of course, are pronounced identically in Spanish, cf. Part I, Chapter 7.)

The change of the letter 〈b〉 in Latin words to 〈v〉 in the descendants of those words in Spanish and French (and thus in English) was a common one in these languages in intervocalic position (between vowels), as in the case of Lat. prŏbāre. Intervocalic 〈b〉 changed its sound in these languages to the same sound that Latin 〈v〉 changed to, which explains why this letter was chosen to represent the new sound. The sound that Latin 〈v〉 and intervocalic 〈b〉 changed to was somewhat different in French and Spanish, namely [v] in the former and [β] in the latter. Also, in Spanish, but not in French the new sound [β] and the old sound [b] (of non-intervocalic 〈b〉) eventually fully merged into a single sound (phoneme), one with two contextually determined variants (allophones): [b] and [β]. Later on, Spanish, but not French, changed the spelling of words so that they would have the same letter, 〈b〉 or 〈v〉 that a word’s etymon (source word) had in Latin, e.g. Lat. prŏbāre and tabĕrna became French taverne and prouver, but Modern Spanish taberna and probar (cf. Part I, Chapters 7 and 10).[1]

As we said earlier, in Modern Spanish, probar is a polysemous word, one with more than one meaning or use (senses). There seem to be at least four major senses for this word:

(1)  the prove/demonstrate sense, used with theories and claims, which translates into English as to prove, e.g. No probaron que ella estuviera allí ‘They didn’t prove that she was there’

(2)  the ‘put to the test’ sense, which can be translated mostly as to test or to try (out), as in Probaron el arma ‘They tried/tested the weapon’. There may be more specialized translations, such as when probar is used with actors and thus would translate as to audition, as in Probaron a cinco actores ese día ‘They tested five actors that day’.

Another subsense (or perhaps a separate sense) is when probar is used with articles of clothing, which translates as to try on, e.g. Se probó el vestido ‘She tried on the dress’ (reflexive) or Le probó el vestido a la niña ‘She tried the dress on the girl’ (non-reflexive)

(3)  the ‘taste’ or ‘try’ sense used with food or drink, as in No probamos el pescado ‘We didn’t try/taste the fish’ (in some contexts, other translations may be more appropriate, as in No pruebo el vino ‘I never drink wine’)[2]

(4)  the ‘try doing’ sense, used with complement verbs, as in probar a, e.g. Prueba a llamarle otra vez ‘Try calling him again’

As we mentioned earlier, the English verb prove [ˈpʰɹuv] is a cognate of Sp. probar. They are only ‘partial friends’, however, since only some of their meanings coincide, as we have seen, but not all. (We say that two cognates are false friends  when none of their meanings coincide, ‘partial friends’ when only some of them do, and ‘good friends’ when their meanings and uses are very similar, cf. Part I, Chapter 1.)

Eng. prove is an early 13th century loan from the Anglo-Norman (a dialect of Old French brought to England) reflex (descendant) of this Latin verb, which was spelled either prover or pruver at the time (cf. Modern French prouver [pʀuˈve]). From very early on, this English verb was used with different senses: ‘to show, demonstrate (first half of the 12th cent.), to establish as true (c1130), (used reflexively) to show oneself to be, to turn out to be (c1170), to show oneself to be able (c1170), (of a thing) to be evidence (1197), to be (in a particular condition) (c1285), to prove in court (c1292), to test (end of the 13th cent., apparently originally Anglo-Norman)’ (OED). All of these senses are found in Old Spanish provar and most of them are also found in Modern Spanish probar.

As we saw above, Sp. probar is only sometimes equivalent to Eng. prove, meaning that these cognates are only partial friends. The same thing is true the other way around. Engl. prove only sometimes translates as probar, since only some of these words’ senses coincide. The following are the main senses of Eng. prove and their Spanish translations (there are a few other, rare senses of Eng. prove, such as a legal sense and one used in cooking):

(1)  the ‘give proof’ sense: this can be translated as probar, though demostrar is a very common alternative, more so than its English cognate demonstrate, e.g. They proved that she was guilty = Sp. Probaron/demostraron que ella era culpable

(2)  the ‘turn out’ sense: this translates as resultar, e.g. She proved to be right = Sp. Resultó tener razón; when prove is followed by an adjective, Spanish typically ads a verb, e.g. It proved (to be) useful = Sp. Resultó (ser) útil (Collins)

(3)  the reflexive ‘demonstrate’ sense: this always translates as demostrar, e.g. He has proved himself worthy of our trust = Sp. Ha demostrado ser digno de nuestra confianza (Collins)

Finally, let us mention that there are words that are closely related to the cognate verbs Eng. prove ~ Sp. probar, such as the nouns Eng. proof ~ Sp. prueba, which come from Medieval Latin noun prŏba, which we will explore in the next section. Another related word is the English adjective provable, a 14th century loan from Old Fr. provable, which derived it from the verb. Eng. provable translates into Spanish as demostrable, verificable, and comprobable, even though Spanish has a cognate of provable, namely probable ‘probable’, which has a different meaning, as we will see in section §1.7.6 below.

So, let us next look in detail at the nouns that derive from the Medieval Latin noun prŏba derived from the verb prŏbāre, namely Eng. proof and probe and Sp. prueba. Finally, in the last section of this chapter, we will look at other English and Spanish words that ultimately derive from Latin words that contained the very same root prŏb‑, words that have the root prob‑ or prov‑.

Go to Part 6

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[1] The patrimonial descendant of Lat. taberna was tavierna in Old Spanish (also sometimes spelled tabierna). Eventually, the learned form taberna won over under the influence of the original Latin word. In other words, Sp. taberna is a semi-learned word (Sp. semicultismo), cf. Part I, Chapter 1.

[2] Note that the noun and verb test are unrelated to the noun and verb taste. The latter were borrowed from Old French in the early 14th century. The verb to taste comes from Old French taster ‘to touch, feel’ (modern French tâter ‘to feel, touch, try, taste’, cognate of Provençal tastar, Old Spanish tastar, Italian tastare , descendants of Vulgar Latin *tastare, which was apparently derived from *taxtāre, from an earlier *taxitāre , frequentative of taxāre ‘to touch, feel, handle’ and ‘to censure, charge, tax with a fault; to rate, value, reckon, compute (at so much), make a valuation of’ and, in medieval Latin, ‘to impose a tax’ (hence the source of the verbs Eng. tax and Sp. tasar) (OED).