I just stumbled upon "diario" and "periódico" while extending my vocabulary. Both mean newspaper in English.
Is there any context in which just one fits? Can they be used interchangeably?
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Sign up to join this communityPeriódico means periodic, that is, periodic, regular, recurring.
Diario means daily.
Hence, diario is something more strict that periódico because the first refers to a daily periodic.
However, currently both are used almost interchangeably and so DRAE states:
Del lat. periodĭcus, y este del gr. περιοδικός periodikós.
adj. Que guarda período determinado.
adj. Que se repite con frecuencia a intervalos determinados.
adj. Dicho de un impreso: Que se publica con determinados intervalos de tiempo. U. m. c. s. m.
...
- m. Publicación que sale diariamente.
Del lat. diarium.
adj. Correspondiente a todos los días. Rutina, comida diaria.
m. Relato de lo que ha sucedido día por día. Escribe un diario íntimo. Los diarios de Jovellanos.
m. Libro o cuaderno donde se lleva un diario.
m. Periódico que se publica todos los días.
I cannot think in any periódico that is not diario. You can find semanarios, etc, but nowadays I haven't heard of the use of periódico to refer to something that is not a diario.
Periódico
is a newspaper published periodically, with the period not specified. But also can be used as diario
. According to RAE:
3 adj. Dicho de un impreso: Que se publica con determinados intervalos de tiempo. U. m. c. s. m. 6 m. Publicación que sale diariamente.
Diario
is a newspaper published daily. According to RAE:
- m. Periódico que se publica todos los días.
Therefore, a diario
is a periódico
, and both can be used to refer to a newspaper published on a daily basis.
You also have the word semanario
to specify a publication published every week.
You can use both of them as they mean almost the same, but I would suggest you to use periódico because any periódico is a diario but there are other type of diarios that are not periódicos like a little girl's diary.