ingléspañol

calumnia=calumny

(in keeping with the true impetus of this blog, I will state future posts here with the same standardised form of the above title, that of the Spanish word first, an equal sign, then the English word)

now, the definition from the Real Acedemia Española:

Calumbia. Del Lat. Calumnia
1 Acusacion falsa, hecha maliciosamente para causar daño.
2. Der. Imputacion de un delito hecha a sabiendas de su falsedad.


now, the definition from dictionary.com:

Calumny
1. A false statement maliciously made to injure another's reputation.
2. The utterance of maliciously false statements; slander.

etymology: Middle English calumnie, from Old French calomnie, from Latin calumnia, from calv, to deceive.

"calumnia" is the same word in Italian, and is the same in Latin. [interesting sidenote, I found a Chilean etymological website which states that the latin base word is actually "caloui" which is from the Greek "kaloi" which means "to cover" - but I would really like some sort of secondary verification]

Why I bring this to you personally is a from a conversation that my wife and I had the other day, in which she was describing some situation at her work, and said, "And the women from second shift were trying to calumny half the people on third shift."

at this point she stopped and asked me if she had translated "calumnia" correctly. I told her I felt that it was firmly a noun, rather than a verb, as it, "utter a calumny," etc. She feels that the verb in Spanish is, "calumniar."

However, this is futher evidence [and don't worry, I'll post more] that Spanish is actually simply highly elevated English. "Calumny" is indeed an English word, but I doubt it you'll ever meet anybody outside the English Department of any university that knows it. Plus, if you'll look at the etymology above to see the circuitous route it took to get here (and to get forgotten!) and then see how it remained THE SAME directly into Spanish and across the sea into the New World, then you should realise that there is perhaps some opinionated truth to this theory.

Basically, for all you "Good Ol' Americans" out there, the truth is: your basic illituerate Mexican day labourer knows mroe elevated English that the majority of US!

VG

posted by Verble Gherulous @ 11:36 AM