Doublets: the same Latin word, borrowed twice

Explanation

A palabra patrimonial travelled the long way: from spoken Latin through every sound change, mouth to mouth, for two thousand years. A cultismo took the short way: it was lifted from written Latin by scholars — mostly from the 13th century onwards, at Alfonso X's court, then again in the Renaissance and in modern science — and barely changed on the way in. When both routes carried the same Latin word, you get a doublet: COLLOCARE gave colgar and colocar; PLENUM gave lleno and pleno; CLAVEM gave llave and clave; STRICTUM gave estrecho and estricto; DIRECTUM gave derecho and directo; DELICATUM gave delgado and delicado; INTEGRUM gave entero and íntegro; CATHEDRAM gave cadera and cátedra.

More often only half the pair survives on each side, and that half-doublet is what makes Spanish vocabulary look discontinuous: the everyday noun evolved, but its adjective was borrowed later from Latin, so the two no longer resemble each other. leche but lácteo, hijo but filial, hierro but férreo, agua but acuático, ojo but ocular, noche but nocturno, hueso but óseo, dedo but digital, oreja but auricular, sangre but sanguíneo, año but anual, boca but bucal. Learn the Latin root once and the technical register comes free.

Two warnings. Doublets almost never mean the same thing: colgar is 'to hang' while colocar is 'to place'; delgado is 'thin' while delicado is 'delicate'; cadera is 'hip' while cátedra is a professorship — both from CATHEDRA 'seat'. And the learned member is normally the more formal, technical or bookish one, so reaching for it because it looks familiar from English or French will often raise the register more than you intended.

Examples

Related rules

• From Latin to Spanish: the sound changes that did the work
• Greek in Spanish: three different doors
• Spanish is spoken Latin, not written Latin