arbiter — a judge or someone who can decide the outcome of a dispute
árbitro — the masculine Spanish noun of the same meaning
árbitra — the feminine Spanish noun
When learning Spanish, I came upon “árbitro” in the vocabulary for sports because it’s the word for “referee.” I was young then and hadn’t had any contact with the legal system yet, so I couldn’t make the connection and had a hard time remembering the word “árbitro” for “referee.”
It didn’t stick, but years later, when I was teaching Spanish and the word “arbitration” had been drilled into my head due to a conflict between the teachers’ association and our administration, the vocabulary word of “árbitro” came up again.
Lightbulb moment for the young teacher I was then. It all made perfect sense to me then.
Our word, “arbiter,” comes to us intact from its Latin root of arbiter. In English, though, we tend to use the word “judge” when referring to courtroom decisions and “referee” or “umpire” when referring to sporting arena decisions. In Spanish, the word “juez” is typically used to refer to the courtroom judge, but “árbitro” is used for the referee.
This makes sense because in its Latin meaning, an arbiter was an onlooker who could make a decision, and that’s essentially what a referee or umpire does, whereas a judge in a courtroom hears evidence of things that are well in the past.
Its verb form of “arbitrate” has a cognate in Spanish, too. It’s “arbitrar.” “Arbitration” isn’t a solid cognate, but it’s close with “arbitraje.”
Oddly, though, our most commonly used form of this word is “arbitrary,” but we’ve shifted the meaning of this word in the opposite direction and given it a sense of randomness instead of judiciousness. That sense of the word is still in the meanings listed in dictionaries, but it’s a secondary meaning rather than the primary one as it originally was.
I attend a lot of sporting events, and sometimes it can seem that the arbiters’ decisions or calls are much too arbitrary. I try to give them the benefit of their years of experience, but even I’ve been known to boo a few times at them. We’re all guilty of being armchair or bleacher arbiters at times.
For now, you be the “arbiter” and decide if your cognate cognizance is improving. I certainly hope it is.
Until next time. Feel free to share this with others who might like to improve their vocabularies. Thanks.
Tammy Marshall
Arbiter