abatir

Forms

abatir (first-person singular present abato, first-person singular preterite abatí, past participle abatido)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote abater, abbater, abbatir, abattir and avatir.^[2] The old strong participle abatudo stands beside abatido in 13th-century texts such as the Libro de Alexandre and the Primera Crónica General.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish abatir (“to bring down”), inherited from Late Latin abbattuere (“to knock down”), a compound of ad- and battuō (“to beat”).^[1][2][4][5] The Late Latin verb is recorded from the 6th century, in the Lex Salica.^[4][6][1] The Academy, from Autoridades to the current DLE, analyses the Spanish word instead as formed from Spanish a- + batir, and Corominas lists it among the derivatives of that verb, with the Cid as its first record.^{[7][8][9][10]}

The same Latin verb gave Portuguese abater, Galician abater, Catalan abatre, French abattre, Italian abbattere and Romanian abate (“to divert”).^[4][5] The English word abate belongs to the same family.^[1] Corominas notes that the simple verb had a weaker life in Castilian and Portuguese than in the other Romance languages, and that in the 13th century the infinitive bater, closer to the Latin, still alternated with the form in -ir.^[9]

The Latin verb is rare in the literary language.^[1] Coromines takes it to be a word of everyday Roman speech borrowed from another Indo-European language, probably Celtic, and Wiktionary also considers a Gaulish or Germanic source.^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) uses the verb for unhorsing enemies in battle: abatió a siete e a quatro matava “he struck down seven and killed four”.^[2][12][9] The sense is “to knock to the ground”, often fatally.^[2][13]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish already used the verb for a hawk that brings birds down to the ground, as in the Moamín of about 1250, and for a bird of prey swooping on its quarry.^[14][15] The prose of Alfonso X also has the senses “to dishearten” and “to dishonour, debase”.^[14]

Autoridades (1726) records lowering a flag or sails and the swoop of a bird of prey, with a passage of the Quijote where the galleys strike their awnings.^[7] The Academy's 1770 dictionary adds the nautical sense of a ship falling off its course to leeward, and the 1884 edition the sense “to lay flat what stood upright”, as the masts of a ship or the funnel of a steamer.^[16][17] The sense “to humble” is now marked as obsolete, while the uses in card games and in geometry are recent.^[8] The sense “to kill a person or animal so that it falls”, common in news reports, is recorded by NEOMA.^[18][8]

In Judeo-Spanish the verb also means “to ease, lessen”, said of hunger, fever or the wind.^[19] In Asturian it is used for harrowing the soil before sowing.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid records the verb for striking down an enemy.^[2][9][10]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar uses it for throwing down idols.^[12]
• c. 1250 – the Moamín describes hawks that bring birds down to the ground.^[14]
• 1272–1275 – the General Estoria uses it for dishonouring a woman.^[14]
• c. 1450 – the noun abatimiento is first recorded.^[10]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin deturbo and deicio for abatir derribando.^[2][20]
• 1726 – Autoridades analyses the verb as a and batir and records the lowering of flags and sails.^[7]
• 1770 – the Academy's dictionary records the nautical sense “to fall off to leeward”.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology a + batir and adds the sense “to lay flat”.^[17]

Meanings

Verb

1. To knock down, bring down, demolish; also reflexive.^[8][1]
2. To make something fall or come down, to lower it; figuratively, to break someone's power: Abatieron la bandera al caer la tarde.^[8][21]
3. To lay flat or tip over something that stood upright: abatir el respaldo.^[8][22]
4. To shoot down; to kill a person or animal so that it falls.^[8][18][1]
5. To dishearten, depress, sap the strength of; usually reflexive.^[8][1]
6. To take down or dismantle something, such as a tent.^[8]
7. (card games) To lay down one's cards, fanned out, after making the highest play.^[8]
8. (geometry) To rotate a plane about its line of intersection with another until the two coincide.^[8]
9. (obsolete) To humble; also reflexive.^[8][1]
10. (nautical, intransitive) Of a ship, to drift off course under the wind or a current.^[8]
11. (reflexive) Of a bird or aircraft, to swoop down on prey or to the ground; figuratively, of misfortune, to fall on someone: Un halcón se abatió sobre la paloma.^[8][1]

Word family

• abatible
• abatido
• abatimiento

Related words

• batir
• combatir
• debatir
• rebatir
• Portuguese abater

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. abatir
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. abatir
4. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
5. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 55
7. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 8
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. abatir
9. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 544
10. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. batir
11. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 1, 728
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. abatir
13. ^ Alonso Pedraz, Martín (1986), Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, 2 vols., Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, p. 29
14. ^ a b c d Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. abatir
15. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 2
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1770), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 2nd ed., vol. I: A–B, Madrid: Joachín Ibarra, p. 8
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 3
18. ^ a b Universidad de Murcia, NEOMA: Diccionario de neologismos del español actual (online), p. s.v. abatir
19. ^ Nehama, Joseph (1977), Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol, Madrid: CSIC, p. s.v. abatir
20. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. abatir
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. abatir
22. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. abatir