adorar

Forms

adorar (first-person singular present adoro, first-person singular preterite adoré, past participle adorado)^[1] Old Spanish also had a semi-popular form aorar, frequent in the Auto de los Reyes Magos, Berceo and other early texts; its few records do not go beyond the 13th century.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin adōrō (“to address; to pray to”).^[2][4][5][1] García de Diego and the DCECH treat the word as learned, beside the semi-popular Old Spanish aorar.^[6][2] The same Latin verb gave aorar in Old Catalan, Old French aorer and Old Occitan azorar.^[7] In French and Portuguese, too, the popular form gave way to the learned French adorer and Portuguese adorar under the influence of the Church's Latin.^[7][8][9]

The Latin verb is formed of ad- (“to”) and ōrō (“to speak, plead; to pray”).^[10][11] In early Latin it meant “to address, plead with”, and the religious sense “to pray to, worship” came later.^[10][12] De Vaan concludes from the order of the records that the simple verb first meant “to plead, speak openly”, and derives it from ōs (“mouth”).^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is a prayer in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy): tres reyes de Arabia te vinieron adorare “three kings of Arabia came to worship you”.^[3][14] The Auto de los Reyes Magos (c. 1180) has both forms: Imos in romería aquel rei adorar “we go on pilgrimage to worship that king” and aoralo é “I will worship him”.^[3][14] In both the verb means to worship God or a divine being.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish the verb meant to revere a being as divine, and also, in Alfonso X's prose, to pray or beseech.^[15][16] The sense “to love intensely” is an exaggeration of the religious one: Covarrubias in 1611 explains that la adora said of a lover is not to be taken literally, and Cejador notes that the word, reserved among Christians for the worship of God and the cross, was applied by lovers to their ladies, as in the Quijote.^[17][18] The Diccionario de Autoridades gives three senses: to revere, to pray (“little used”) and to love someone to excess.^[19]

From 1843 the Academy also recorded kissing the Pope's hand in recognition of him as St Peter's successor, later described as the cardinals' homage to a newly elected Pope; the DLE has dropped this sense.^[20][21][5] The 2001 edition already has the weaker sense “to like something very much”.^[21] In the Dominican Republic adorar means to leave the best part of a dish for last.^[22]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – first recorded, in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[3][2]
• c. 1180 – adorar and aorar in the Auto de los Reyes Magos.^[3]
• 1254 – the verb appears in Alfonso X's prose.^[16]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin adoro for adorar inclinándose “to worship bowing down”.^[23][24]
• 1532 – an early record from the Americas, in Mexico: adoran al sol a manera de gentiles “they worship the sun like heathens”.^[25]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains the lover's use of the word.^[17]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the senses “to revere”, “to pray” and “to love to excess”.^[19]
• 1843 – the Academy adds the homage to the Pope.^[20]
• 2001 – the Academy's dictionary has the sense “to like something very much”.^[21]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To worship: to revere or pay religious honour to someone or something held to be divine: Los antiguos egipcios adoraban al sol.^[5][1]
2. (transitive) To adore, to love someone very deeply: Esa mujer adora a sus nietos.^[5][1]
3. (transitive) To like something very much: Adoro el chocolate.^[5]
4. (intransitive) To pray.^[5]

Word family

• adorable
• adoración
• adorador
• adoratriz

Related words

• orar
• oración
• Latin adōrō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 288
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. adorar
4. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. orar
5. ^ a b c d e f 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. adorar
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. adorar
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. adōrāre
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. 111
10. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. adorar
12. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
14. ^ 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. adorar
15. ^ 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. 144
16. ^ a b 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. adorar
17. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 68
18. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 42
19. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 91
20. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 14
21. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. adorar
22. ^ Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. adorar
23. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 285
24. ^ 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. adorar
25. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. adorar