alzar

Forms

alzar (first-person singular present alzo, first-person singular preterite alcé, past participle alzado)^[1] Old Spanish wrote alçar (alça, alçó, alçado), the usual spelling of the medieval texts.^[2][3] Judeo-Spanish has alsar from the 16th century on, a form also common in modern popular speech, and Navarre has alchar in the 20th century.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *altiāre (“to raise”), a verb formed on altus (“high”).^[4][5][6] The Old Spanish form was alçar.^[3][1] Wiktionary analyses the Vulgar Latin verb as the adjective with the verb suffix -iō, and says it replaced the classical altāre.^[1] Segura Munguía suggests that the comparative altior may have influenced its form.^[7] The Latin verb was later taken back into Medieval Latin, where Du Cange records it with the senses “to lift, to raise”.^[1][8]

Corominas calls it a word common to all the Romance languages.^[4] The same verb is Portuguese alçar, Catalan alçar, Occitan ausar, French hausser and Italian alzare.^[9][10][11]

The Latin adjective goes back to *altos and probably to *h₂el-to-, a verbal adjective of the root “to grow, nourish”; it is in origin the participle of alō (“to nourish”).^[12][1][13] De Vaan names Celtic and Germanic cognates, among them Old High German alt (“old”).^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to a charter of 1044 from Oelschläger's list of first records.^[4][5] The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) already has the main sense “to raise, lift”: alçó su mano diestra, la cara se santigua “he raised his right hand and crossed himself”.^[14][15]

Semantic evolution

In the medieval texts the verb already had the senses “to raise”, “to raise the host at Mass” (from the 13th century), “to take away, put away, keep” (Berceo, Alfonso X) and, in the reflexive, “to rebel”, as in the Estoria de España's alçar me con tierra “to rise up and seize the land”.^[15][16] The historical dictionary of the Academy groups its senses under three ideas: removing or taking away, putting something high, and producing something tall, such as a building.^[3] In law alzada became the word for an appeal, already in Alfonso X.^[4]

The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it in 1726 as putting something higher than it was, and recorded the ringing of a bell tocar a alzar at the elevation of the host and the phrase alzar rey, to proclaim a king.^[17] Terreros added the farming sense of the first ploughing of stubble land, which the Academy still gives.^[18][6] The sense “to put away, keep”, common in Murcia, Almería and Argentina, survives in Central America and Mexico, where alzar also means to tidy a house or a room.^[4][19][20] In much of Latin America alzarse is said of domestic animals that run away and turn wild.^[19][20]

Timeline

• 1044 – first record, in a charter of Oelschläger's list.^[4][5]
• c. 1050 – a Mozarabic kharja has álsā-me, which García Gómez read as “take me out (of this state)”.^[3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses alçar for raising the hand.^[14][15]
• 1218–c. 1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes has the noun alçada “appeal”.^[14]
• 1292–1293 – the Castigos e documentos use it for the elevation of the host at Mass.^[15]
• 1527 – first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo, with alzarse con la tierra “to seize the land in revolt”.^[21]
• 1535 – the compound alzaprima “lever” appears in Fernández de Oviedo.^[4]
• 1606 – first record of the derivative realzar.^[5][4]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades derives it from alto “with the small change of t into z”.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. altare”.^[22]

Meanings

Verb

1. To raise or lift; to move something upwards: Alzó la maleta hasta el estante.^[6][1]
2. To build or erect a building or monument.^[6]
3. (religion) To raise the host and the chalice at Mass after the consecration; also used without an object.^[6]
4. (card games) To cut the deck.^[6]
5. To exalt or glorify.^[6]
6. To set up or institute.^[6]
7. To raise a price.^[6]
8. To raise the voice: No alces la voz delante de los niños.^[6]
9. To lift a penalty or a restriction.^[6]
10. To incite to rebellion; mostly reflexive, alzarse, to rise up or revolt.^[6][1]
11. To take away or remove; to steal.^[6][1]
12. To put away, keep or hide.^[6][1]
13. To gather in the harvest from the field.^[6]
14. (agriculture) To give stubble land its first ploughing.^[6]
15. (reflexive, law) To appeal against a judgment.^[1]
16. (Mexico, Central America) To tidy or put things back in their place.^[19]

Word family

• alza
• alzada
• alzado
• alzamiento
• alce
• realzar
• alzacuello
• alzadora
• sobrealzar
• alzaprima
• alzapié

Related words

• alto
• ensalzar
• Latin altus
• Italian alzare

Usage notes

Alzar and levantar share most of their senses, and the Academy defines the first senses of alzar by levantar.^[6] Set phrases include alzar el vuelo and a mano alzada.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. alzar
3. ^ 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. alzar
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 224
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. alzar
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q 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. alzar
7. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 35
8. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre, p. s.v. altiare
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 385
10. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 465
11. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 160
12. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. altus
14. ^ 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. alzar
15. ^ a b c d 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. 271
16. ^ 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. alzar
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 254
18. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 1, 88
19. ^ 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. alzar
20. ^ a b Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 88
21. ^ 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. alzar
22. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 63