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The word perfect in this sense means "completed" (from Latin perfectum, which is the perfect passive participle of the verb perficere "to complete"). In traditional Latin and Ancient Greek grammar, the perfect tense is a particular, conjugated -verb form.
This word ending—thought to be difficult for Spanish speakers to pronounce at the time—evolved in Spanish into a "-te" ending (e.g. axolotl = ajolote). As a rule of thumb, a Spanish word for an animal, plant, food or home appliance widely used in Mexico and ending in "-te" is highly likely to have a Nahuatl origin.
aciago = unhappy, sad: probably from Latin aegyptius dies, "Egyptian day," from Ancient Greek Aigyptiakos (Αιγυπτιακός) "Egyptian" , from Aigyptos, see egipcio below. barca = boat, launch, barge: from Late Latin barca, from Ancient Greek báris "flat-bottomed boat, launch" of Egyptian origin.
The form of the word long fluctuated in various languages. The English language had the alternates, "perfection" and the Biblical "perfectness." [2] The word "perfection" derives from the Latin "perfectio", and "perfect" — from "perfectus". These expressions in turn come from "perficio" — "to finish", "to bring to an end".
The Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana (in English, Brief etymological dictionary of the Spanish language) is an etymological dictionary compiled by the Catalan philologist Joan Corominas (1905–1997), and first published in 1961—with revised editions in 1967, 1973, 1993, and 2008—by Gredos in Madrid.
For example, a Latinate word might enter English by way of Old French, but enter Spanish directly from Latin. Such differences can introduce changes in spelling and meaning. Although most of the cognates have at least one meaning shared by English and Spanish, they can have other meanings that are not shared.
The word perfect in the tense name comes from a Latin root referring to completion, rather than to perfection in the sense of "having no flaws". (In fact this "flawless" sense of perfect evolved by extension from the former sense, because something being created is finished when it no longer has any flaws.) Perfect tenses are named thus because ...
Spanish does not usually employ such a structure in simple sentences. The translations of sentences like these can be readily analyzed as being normal sentences containing relative pronouns. Spanish is capable of expressing such concepts without a special cleft structure thanks to its flexible word order.