agitar

Forms

agitar (first-person singular present agito, first-person singular preterite agité, past participle agitado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin agitō (“to set in motion, stir, drive”), a learned word.^[2][3][1][4] The Latin verb is a frequentative of agō (“to drive, act”), formed with -itō.^[3][1][5] The base verb continues Proto-Indo-European *h₂eǵ- (“to drive, lead”).^[6]

The same Latin verb was borrowed as Portuguese agitar, Catalan agitar, French agiter and Italian agitare;^[7][8][9] Machado sees the kept /t/ as proof that the Portuguese word and its Romance parallels are learned.^[7][8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to Juan Manuel, but the historical dictionary shows that the passage of the Libro de las armas (1342) reads acertassen in the 15th-century manuscript, so the word is not attested there.^[2][10] The first record is the pronominal se agitar in a Bible translation of about 1400, of the judgment that began to be pressed against Menelaus.^[11]^(DEMel|s.v. agitar(se)) In 1427–28 Enrique de Villena's translation of the Aeneid has Orestes agitado de las furias “driven by the Furies”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Alonso de Palencia and Nebrija still defined the Latin verb without a Spanish equivalent, and the word became common only in the 16th century, first for driving or pursuing, as in Andrés Laguna's Dioscórides (1555), where reeds are agitadas del viento “shaken by the wind”.^[10] Autoridades (1726) called it “purely Latin”.^[12]

The 18th century added stirring a liquid or a mixture and, with Feijoo (1729), debating a question; the political sense of stirring up unrest appears with Quintana in 1793.^[10][13] In Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico it also means “to hurry someone”, and in several countries agitarse is “to get out of breath”.^[14][3]

Timeline

• c. 1400 – a Bible translation has se agitar.^[11]
• 1427–1428 – Villena's Aeneid has agitado de las furias.^[10]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin dictionary renders agito as “to goad beasts or harass”.^[15]
• 1555 – Laguna's Dioscórides uses it of reeds shaken by the wind.^[10]
• 1726 – Autoridades calls it a purely Latin word.^[12]
• 1729 – Feijoo uses it for debating questions.^[10]
• 1793 – Quintana uses it of stirring up minds and public unrest.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy adds the figurative sense “to trouble the mind”.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also reflexive) To shake or move something often and violently from side to side: Agitó la bandera desde el balcón.^[3][1]
2. (transitive, also reflexive) To trouble (inquietar), to disturb the mind.^[3][1]
3. (transitive) To stir up political or social unrest.^[3][17]
4. (Cuba, colloquial) To hurry (apremiar) someone.^[3][14]
5. (reflexive, Honduras, Caribbean, Bolivia, Paraguay) To breathe with difficulty.^[14]

Word family

• agitado
• agitador

Related words

• agitación
• acto
• Latin agitō
• French agiter

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 43
3. ^ a b c d e f g 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. agitar
4. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. agitar
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. agitō
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. agō
7. ^ a b Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. 140
8. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 139
9. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. agiter
10. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. agitar
11. ^ 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. agitar
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 116
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1770), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 2nd ed., vol. I: A–B, Madrid: Joachín Ibarra, p. 1, 96
14. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. agitar
15. ^ 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. agitar
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 29
17. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. agitar