usted
SpanishEdit
Alternative formsEdit
EtymologyEdit
From vuestra merced (literally “"your mercy" (etymological) or "your grace" (idiomatic)”), an honorific style.[1] In 17th-century Spanish there was a number of variants, including the intermediate forms vuesasted and vusted. Cf. Portuguese você and Catalan vosté. The following list has the variants reported by Coromines and Pascual[2], with their reported first year of attestation:
Early modern variants
- vuesasted, 1597
- vuasted, 1617
- vusted, 1619
- usted, 1620
- bosanzé, 1620 (Lope de Vega, Pedro Carbonero, portrayed as said by (ex-)Muslims)
- vuesarced, 1621
- voazé, 1625 (Vélez de Guevara, El Rey en su imagen, portrayed as criminal cant)
- vucé, 1626
- vuarced, ca. 1630
- boxanxé, ca. 1631 (Quevedo, Libro de todas las cosas y otras muchas más, portrayed as said by (ex-)Muslims)
- vuested, 1635
- voarced, 1635
- vusté (in Quiñones de Benavente, died 1651)
PronunciationEdit
PronounEdit
usted m or f (plural ustedes)
- second person formal; you (singular)
- (Colombia, chiefly Bogotá) second person informal; you (singular)
Usage notesEdit
- Functionally, usted and ustedes are second person pronouns, but grammatically, the verbs they govern are conjugated in the third person. See Appendix:Spanish pronouns for details.
See alsoEdit
Spanish personal pronouns
nominative | dative | accusative | disjunctive | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
first person | singular | yo | me | mí1 | |||
plural | masculine2 | nosotros | nos | nosotros | |||
feminine | nosotras | nosotras | |||||
second person | singular | tuteo | tú | te | ti1 | ||
voseo | vos | vos | |||||
formal3 | usted | le, se4 | lo/la5 | usted | |||
plural | familiar6 | masculine2 | vosotros | os | vosotros | ||
feminine | vosotras | vosotras | |||||
formal/general3 | ustedes | les, se4 | los/las5 | ustedes | |||
third person | singular | masculine2 | él | le, se4 | lo | él | |
feminine | ella | la | ella | ||||
neuter | ello7 | lo/la5 | ello | ||||
plural | masculine2 | ellos | les, se4 | los | ellos | ||
feminine | ellas | las | ellas | ||||
reflexive | — | se | sí1 |
- Not used with con; conmigo, contigo, and consigo are used instead, respectively
- Like other masculine Spanish words, masculine Spanish pronouns can be used when the gender of the subject is unknown or when the subject is plural and of mixed gender.
- Treated as if it were third-person for purposes of conjugation and reflexivity
- If le or les precedes lo, la, los, or las in a clause, it is replaced with se (e.g., Se lo dije instead of Le lo dije)
- Depending on the implicit gender of the object being referred to
- Used primarily in Spain
- Used only in rare circumstances
ReferencesEdit
- ^ de Gonge, Bob (2005) , “El desarrollo de las variantes de vuestra merced a usted”, in Actas del II Congreso de la Región Noroeste de Europa de la Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de América Latina (ALFAL), ISSN 1139-8736
- ^ Coromines, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1983–1991) , “usted”, in Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (in Spanish), volume Ri-X, Madrid: Gredos, →ISBN, page 844