aludir

Forms

aludir (first-person singular present aludo, first-person singular preterite aludí, past participle aludido)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin allūdō (“to play or frolic beside; to jest; to allude”), a learned word that Vox dates to the 16th century.^[2][3][1][4] Corominas lists it in the DCECH among the learned derivatives of lūdus (“game, play”), all of them taken from Latin.^[5] The Latin verb is formed ad- (“to, towards”) + lūdō (“to play”).^[6][1]

Its first sense in Latin was “to play or sport with someone or something”; it came to mean “to joke” and then “to hint at a thing without stating it”, the sense Spanish took over.^[6][7][2] In 1611 Covarrubias already explained it as saying one thing while pointing secretly at another.^[8]

De Vaan derives the simple verb from Proto-Indo-European *loid- (“to let go frequently, play”), an o-grade present of frequentative meaning, with cognates in Irish, Greek, Albanian and Baltic; he considers the noun for “game” probably formed from the verb.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest Spanish record is in Rodrigo Fernández de Santaella's Vocabulario eclesiástico of 1499, where a word is explained como aludiendo al significado del vocablo “as if alluding to the meaning of the word”.^[10][11] There, as in some 16th-century texts, it means “to correspond to, to have a likeness with”.^[11] Earlier hits of the CDH under this lemma belong to other words.^[10] Corominas dated the verb to 1535, in Juan de Valdés, and the BDELC to 1553.^[5][2]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th and 17th centuries the verb meant both “to correspond to, to agree with” and “to refer to something indirectly”, often with a for the thing recalled;^[11][12] Cuervo quotes Valdés, Saavedra Fajardo and Sigüenza for the second use.^[11][12] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as speaking of one thing with reference to another that resembles or matches it.^[13] In 1884 the Academy gave the modern definition, “to refer to a person or thing without naming it”, and added the parliamentary use: to refer to a particular member by name or by his views.^[14]

The verb is intransitive, but a transitive use (me aludió, la persona aludida) spread in the 19th century;^[15][16] Baralt and Cuervo condemned it, and Román noted in Chile that modern writers ignored the censure.^[15][16] Today the DLE accepts the transitive use beside the construction with a.^[3]

Timeline

• 1499 – Fernández de Santaella's Vocabulario eclesiástico has aludiendo, the first record.^[10][11]
• 1535 – Juan de Valdés uses it in the Diálogo de la lengua, Corominas's first record.^[5][12]
• 1553 – the date of first record in the BDELC.^[2][17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records aludir and the noun alusión.^[8][2]
• 1635 – first record in the Americas, in Nueva Vizcaya (Mexico).^[18]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it with quotations from Márquez, Saavedra Fajardo and Lope de Vega.^[13]
• 1855 – Baralt rejects the transitive use.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology and the sense “to refer to without naming”.^[14]

Meanings

Verb

1. To mention someone or something, or to hint at something; also transitive: En su discurso aludió a la crisis del puerto.^[3][19][1]
2. To refer to something indirectly, without naming it.^[19][4]
3. Of a thing: to have a relation, sometimes a veiled one, with someone or something: El nombre del barrio alude a un antiguo molino.^[3]

Word family

• alusión
• alusivo

Related words

• eludir
• ilusión
• preludio
• lúdico
• ludibrio
• Latin lūdus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. aludir
3. ^ a b c d 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. aludir
4. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. aludir
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 707
6. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. allūdō
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. aludir
8. ^ 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. 158
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. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. aludir
11. ^ a b c d e 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. aludir
12. ^ a b c Cuervo, Rufino José (1886–1893), Diccionario de construcción y régimen de la lengua castellana, vols. I–II (A–D), París: A. Roger y F. Chernoviz, p. 1, 368
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 250
14. ^ 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. 62
15. ^ a b c Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 75
16. ^ a b Román, Manuel Antonio (1901–1918), Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, 5 vols., Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de San José, p. 46
17. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 384
18. ^ 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. aludir
19. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. aludir