majesty — sovereign power; a royal personage, or, when capitalized, a title used to address or refer to the reigning king or queen
majestad — the Spanish cognate of the same meanings
I felt compelled to address this word after the passing of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, last week. After such a long reign, there will be many tributes to her, so this is my very humble addition to those. I enjoyed the Netflix series, “The Crown,” so much that I felt incredibly saddened at her passing even though she wasn’t my queen and I certainly never knew her in person, but I did feel like I’d come to know her a little, and I definitely admired her.
Back to our cognate duo. If you make them into adjectives, you get “majestic” in English and “majestuoso” (masculine singular) and “majestuosa” (feminine singular) in Spanish. These words, though, all hearken back to Latin’s major, meaning “greater.”
Thus, when we speak of the “majesty” of the mountains or describe a scene as “majestic,” we are saying that it has a quality of being “greater” than other mountains or other similar scenes. Here we have “a majestic mountain,” or “una montaña majestuosa.”
“Major” in English can be translated a variety of ways in Spanish, depending on its meaning, but it does have a cognate of “mayor” when dealing with age. “Major” means that someone is of full adult age or greater in extent at something. “Mayor” refers to age in the sense of being “older.” You might have an “older brother” which would be “hermano mayor.”
We see that base word “mayor” in the word “mayoría” which is the cognate for “majority.” It’s not an exact cognate, but when you know that “mayor” is the cognate for “major” you can easily see “mayoría” as a cognate for “majority.” These words build upon that Latin base word’s definition of “greater” because you can only have a “majority” if there is a “greater” number of something.
In English there are many expressions that use “major” or words that come from it. I wrote about “majuscule” in an earlier post. Do you remember what it means? It’s a capital letter, or a letter of a “greater” size. Its Spanish cognate? “Mayúscula.”
If you like to travel, maybe you’ve heard of the Spanish island called “Majorca.” Can you guess why it’s called that? Because it’s the “largest” or “greatest” of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea.
Sadly, Her Majesty has passed on. Now, there is a king, so it will be His Majesty. He’s got some big shoes to fill, and I wish him well.
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Until next time.
Tammy Marshall
Majesty