The most die-hard football fans sometimes become violent.
The Latin word acerrĭmus came to Spanish as acerrimo . The first meaning mentioned by the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) in its dictionary refers to the superlative of acre (spicy or rough).
Tenacity, fanaticism
Generally, staunch is used to describe someone who is characterized by tenacity or vigor . It can also refer to someone who shows fanaticism or acts with intransigence .
It can be said that Batman and The Penguin are bitter enemies . The superhero who protects the inhabitants of Gotham City faces again and again the villain who wants to profit from his criminal activities. Their conflicting objectives mean that they never pursue the same objectives.
US Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957), for his part, is often mentioned as a staunch anti-communist . This Republican politician dedicated himself fervently to investigating numerous individuals to determine whether they were communists or undercover Soviet agents. In this way he came to accuse more than two hundred people of being communist sympathizers who infiltrated the American government, although he was never able to prove his accusations.
The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges , meanwhile, is noted as a staunch opponent of Peronism . The poet, short story writer and essayist expressed himself on many occasions against Juan Domingo Perón and his regime .
Some examples
Let's look at three example sentences: "I was always a staunch critic of the president, but I think that this time the president took a very correct measure " , "The Spanish journalist is a staunch defender of freedom of expression" , "The staunchest fans of “a football team can behave violently.”
In the first sentence, the speaker claims to be inflexible in judging his president's actions , but acknowledges that his most recent decision may be the correct one. Then we have the case of a journalist who strongly defends freedom of expression; here, staunch can be understood as "firm or strong." Finally, taking the meaning of "enthusiast", the third example speaks of the violence that often arises between football lovers.
Etymology
We are faced with an adjective that, like many in our language, originated in Latin. In this case, the furthest term we know is acerrimus , which can be translated as "very fierce, very sharp." Before continuing, let us note that, as we anticipated at the beginning of this article, this word can act as a superlative , something that already happened with acerrimus , which fulfilled this function with respect to the adjective acer ("acre, bitter, strong or acidic"). ", when talking about flavors; "pungent, sharp or acute", in the rest of the cases).
There are readers who are staunch critics of the news, especially in the political sphere.
Regarding superlatives and their most common suffix, -issimus , here we note that it is not present, but rather this place is occupied by -errimus . The reason for this particularity is that the adjective acer ends in R. This characteristic, which we find in several other adjectives of Latin origin, gave rise to the use of this variant of the suffix to form the superlative. While among the most common we have very intelligent, very beautiful and very great , for example, among these others we can mention paupérrimo, libérrimo and celebérrimo (for poor, free and famous , respectively).
Returning to the root of acer , we can say that there are many Latin terms that derive from it, which in turn have reached our language; such is the case of acetic, aceto, sour, needle, acridity, acute, pressing, acicular, holly, sting, mediocre, vinegar, exacerbate, acerbo and acid , among others. For its part, the Latin adjective has its origin in the Indo-European root *ak- , which denotes "sharp, acute", and in Spanish it has its mark on acronym, acrophobia, oxide, oxygen and acanthus , to name just a few.