ahogar

Forms

ahogar (first-person singular present ahogo, first-person singular preterite ahogué, past participle ahogado)^[1] Old Spanish wrote afogar or affogar, the usual medieval form, which survives in the north and north-west of Spain.^[2][3] Asturian has afugar, alfogar and afuegar, and ajogar, with an aspirated /h/, is recorded in several parts of Spain and the Americas.^[2] Berceo also used a form with another prefix, enfogar.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish afogar, inherited from Vulgar Latin *affōcāre, an alteration of Latin offōcō (“to choke, throttle”).^[3][5][1][6] The Latin verb is formed ob- and faucēs (“throat”), so that it first meant “to squeeze the throat”.^[3][7] The DLE derives the Spanish verb from a Latin *adfocāre, which it takes from suffōcō (“to suffocate”).^[8] The origin of the Latin word for “throat” is unknown.^[9]

Corominas explains the three oldest Spanish forms, focare, enfogar and the form with ⟨a-⟩, as three ways of adapting the Latin prefix ⟨o-⟩, which was rare in Romance.^[3] This last form won in Castilian, as in Portuguese afogar, Galician afogar, Asturian afogar, Aragonese afocar and Italian affogare.^[3][4][6] Catalan ofegar and Occitan ofegar continue instead a variant officāre, recorded in a Latin recipe of the 7th–10th centuries.^[3][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Glosas Silenses, of the second half of the 10th century, have the form focare, and García de Diego gives it with the Latin gloss vexare “to harass, torment”.^[3][5][4] The form afogar is first recorded in the Fuero Juzgo of 1241, and in Alfonso X's prose the verb means “to kill by stopping the breath”, “to put out”, and “to weigh down, oppress”: a father who loads his sons with burdens they cannot carry affoga them.^[3][11]

Semantic evolution

The sense “to drown, kill by holding under water” is an innovation that Spanish shares only with Portuguese, Catalan and Italian; it is already in Berceo's Milagros in the first half of the 13th century.^[3][5] Corominas thinks it may imitate Greek, where the verb for “to choke” also meant “to drown”, but he notes that the step from one idea to the other is easy anyway.^[3] In medieval and later texts the verb is used for people drowned in rivers and in the sea and for the strangled.^[12][13]

Covarrubias in 1611 listed the ways a person may ahogarse: in water, by something stuck in the throat, by heat, by exhaustion, and by a hand on the throat, and recorded the phrase ahogarse en poca agua for someone overwhelmed by a small difficulty.^[14] Autoridades added the figurative senses “to press, harass” and “to stifle, cut short”, as in stifling a rising in its cradle.^[15] Later Academy editions added plants killed by too much water and a fire smothered under heaped matter.^[16] The modern dictionary also has the slaking of lime, the stalemate-like position in chess, and an engine flooded with too rich a mixture.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 950–1000 – the Glosas Silenses have the form focare.^[3][5]
• 1241 – afogar appears in the Fuero Juzgo.^[3]
• First half of the 13th century – Berceo's Milagros uses enfogar for “to drown”.^[3][5]
• 1254 – Alfonso X's Judizios de las estrellas says the planet Venus is affogada, “put out”, at the end of its course.^[11]
• 1270–1284 – the Estoria de España uses the verb for oppressing and for suffocating in a room.^[11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives ahogar por fuerça with Latin strangulo and suffoco.^[17]
• 1528 – the first record from the Americas, from the Río de la Plata: fifteen men had drowned in a boat.^[13]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records ahogarse en poca agua.^[14]
• 1726 – Autoridades defines the verb and its figurative senses.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary refers the word to afogar.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also reflexive) To kill a person or animal by stopping their breathing; to drown, choke or strangle; reflexive: to drown, to suffocate: Se ahogó al cruzar el río.^[8][1]
2. (transitive, also reflexive) To damage a plant or seed by too much water, by crowding or by weeds.^[8]
3. (transitive) To smother a fire with material heaped on it.^[8]
4. (transitive) To slake lime by pouring water on it.^[8]
5. (transitive, also reflexive) To put out, extinguish; to stifle a sound or feeling.^[8][1]
6. (transitive, also intransitive and reflexive) To oppress, distress, weigh down.^[8]
7. (transitive) To submerge something in water.^[8]
8. (transitive, chess) To leave the opposing king unable to move without going into check.^[8]
9. (transitive, also reflexive) To flood an engine with too rich a fuel mixture.^[8]
10. (nautical) Of a ship: to take in water over the bow when heeling too far.^[8]
11. (reflexive) To feel short of breath, to feel stifled.^[8]

Word family

• desahogado
• ahogadizo
• ahogo
• ahogamiento
• desahogar
• rehogar

Related words

• sofocar
• Latin offoco
• Portuguese afogar
• Catalan ofegar

Usage notes

The DLE has a second, obsolete verb ahogar meaning “to stew, braise”, which it derives from Latin focus “hearth, fire”.^[8] Corominas instead takes it as the same word as “to smother”, recorded in this sense from 1599 to 1617 and still used in Andalusia and Bogotá; rehogar, recorded from 1832, changed its prefix, and Catalan ofegar has the same culinary sense.^[3][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b 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. ahogar
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 87
4. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. ahogar
5. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ahogar
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6046
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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. ahogar
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ 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. 6, 34
11. ^ a b c 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. ahogar
12. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. ahogar
13. ^ a b 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. ahogar
14. ^ 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. 89
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 136
16. ^ 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. 36
17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 287