Reveal refers to removing the veil.
The Latin word develāre , which can be translated as “remove the veil,” came into our language as unveil . This verb refers to making known something that was hidden or that, until then, was unknown .
For example: “The chronicler announced that tomorrow he will be in charge of revealing the name of the famous actress who is pregnant” , “I am not going to reveal who told me, but I found out that you are dating my ex-boyfriend” , “The investigators "They try to reveal what happened to the missing businessman."
Examples of reveal
Reveal, which can also be mentioned as reveal , is linked to discovering something and making it public . Suppose that a journalist carries out an investigation into the development of a public work and discovers that the company that won a tender paid bribes to be chosen. Given this discovery, he makes copies of the documents that demonstrate the corruption and records witnesses who give their testimony about the events. The journalist, once he has gathered everything necessary, is in charge of revealing the facts and presenting the material on his television program. This means that this press man informs society about bribery.
An autopsy , on the other hand, can reveal the causes of a doubtful death . If a man is found dead on a public street, with no visible signs of blows or wounds, it is impossible to explain what happened to him. By performing an autopsy, it can be discovered whether the person suffered a heart attack or was poisoned, to name two possibilities. The autopsy, therefore, is responsible for revealing the reason for death.
An autopsy can reveal the cause of a person's death.
Different meanings
Although in all the examples presented so far the verb reveal is used as a synonym for reveal, the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy does not propose it in the same way, but only gives it one of the two possible meanings of the latter: "remove the veil with which someone has covered something" , as can occur with objects that have been protected or hidden from public view. Furthermore, this meaning of revealing is valid only in Latin America .
Let's look at some example sentences: "The mayor unveiled the commemorative plaque, after which the public began to applaud and the photographers began to immortalize the moment," "From the moment he entered the room, the silence was absolute, until a series of sighs broke him in unison when the face was finally revealed « , «The mystery seemed to have come to an end when the agent unveiled the portrait they had hidden in the attic» .
In Spain , this verb is used with the connotation of bringing something to light or discovering the unknown and there is no space to reveal. The situation in Latin American countries is very different, since there are many regionalisms that mix terms, expressions and conjugations from their mother tongue with their own elements, giving rise to a very wide range of sounds and spellings.
Reveal or reveal
Something similar happens with the verb decodify , which the RAE immediately refers to decode , although in this case it does not mention an Americanism. The prefix dis- serves to denote inversion or denial of the meaning possessed by the simple word to which it is preceded; In the case of unveiling , we can understand that "a veil is removed" , just as decoding denotes the reversal of an encoding process and desabrigar , the action of removing a coat.
The reason that in some regions the letter S of this prefix tends to disappear may be linked to phonetic issues specific to each accent , as well as to the influence of certain foreign languages, something very typical of Latin American history.