The word éxito in Spanish (and cognates in other iberian romance languages) has the meaning of success, but it is a cognate of English “exit”.

According to Wiktionary, they all come from Latin “exitus”, which is a participle of “exire”, which literally means “to go out/outside, to exit, to leave”.

Also on the Wiktionary page for this word is someone asking about this apparent semantic shift in Spanish, which got me wondering as well. Further googling only told me that it’s not just Spanish but also Galician and Portuguese, possibly more.

Does anyone have information on how this shift developed? Or is the written evidence we have so poor that it might just as well have suddenly acquired the current meaning overnight as gradually over several generations and we wouldn’t be able to tell?

  • LvxferreM
    3•7 months ago

    I believe that the semantic shift for ⟨exitus⟩ "coming out"→⟨éxito⟩ “success” went like this:

    1. “coming out” (physically) →
    2. “coming out of a situation” →
    3. “satisfactory coming out of a situation” = “success”.

    The shift from #1 to #2 was already present in Latin, as figurative speech. That’s attested by the Italian cognate ⟨esito⟩ /'ɛ.si.to/ “outcome, result”. For reference English ⟨outcome⟩ shows a similar shift.

    However, meaning #1 did survive into Spanish, and eventually got associated with the inherited doublet ⟨ejido⟩ /e.'xi.ðo/ “common land” (i.e. the land reached after leaving a property). Then when Spanish reborrowed ⟨éxito⟩ it got the more abstract and figurative meaning, as typical.

    For 2→3, English shows a similar shift for ⟨success⟩, borrowed from Latin ⟨successus⟩. The Latin word means “the following”, “the succeeding”, and yet in English it was associated with satisfactory outcomes too. Also, the word ⟨outcome⟩ itself shows an example of 1→2 with native vocab.

    Portuguese ⟨sucesso⟩ also shows the same shift but I don’t know if the word is inherited or reborrowed.

    Regarding Portuguese ⟨êxito⟩, I think that it’s a lateral borrowing from Spanish. Mostly because of the vowel; Latin short /e/, if stressed, usually surfaces as open /ɛ/ in Portuguese, even in reborrowings - for reference check ⟨exército⟩ /e'zɛɾ.si.to/ “army” and ⟨épico⟩ /'ɛ.pi.ko/ “epic”, both with /ɛ/. The closed /e/ makes sense however if the word was from Spanish, since it lacks the /ɛ/ vs. /e/ distinction.