arar

Forms

arar (first-person singular present aro, first-person singular preterite aré, past participle arado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish arar, inherited from Latin arō (“to plough”).^[2][3][4][1] The same Latin verb is Portuguese arar, Galician arar, Asturian arar, Catalan arar, Occitan arar, Old French arer, Italian arare and Romanian ara.^[5][6][1]

The Latin verb continues Proto-Indo-European *h₂erh₃- (“to plough”), and is cognate with Ancient Greek ἀρόω (aróō), Gothic 𐌰𐍂𐌾𐌰𐌽 (arjan) and Old Church Slavonic орати (orati), all “to plough”.^[7][1] The plough itself, arado, is not formed from the Spanish verb: it comes through Old Spanish aradro from arātrum.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

DEMel's first record is a document from Tórtoles of 1199.^[8] The Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250) punishes anyone who hinders bestias o bueyes que araren “beasts or oxen that are ploughing”.^[9] Corominas's first record is the Primera Crónica General, about 1295.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The sense has always been ploughing the land.^[10][8] Covarrubias in 1611 added that it can mean hard toil and need, and recalled the ancient custom of ploughing a traitor city's ground and sowing it with salt.^[11] Autoridades (1726) recorded the poetic arar el mar “to sail the sea”, which the Academy later widened to any passage through a liquid, and the phrase quantos aran y cavan “everybody”.^[12][13] The modern dictionary adds making furrow-like lines on something.^[4]

In Ecuador ararse means “to get drunk”, and in Bolivia arar is used of the skin stinging sharply.^[14]

Timeline

• 1199 – the first record, in a document from Tórtoles.^[8]
• 1218–c. 1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes speaks of oxen ploughing.^[9]
• 13th century – the plough is aradro in the Fuero de Zorita and Alfonso X's legal works.^[2]
• c. 1295 – the Primera Crónica General, Corominas's first record.^[2]
• early 15th century – arado replaces aradro, in the Cancionero de Baena.^[2]
• 1495 – arador is first recorded, in Nebrija.^[3]
• 1548 – the first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[15]
• 1611 – Covarrubias on ploughing cities and sowing them with salt.^[11]
• 1726 – Autoridades records arar el mar “to sail the sea”.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. To plough: to turn the soil, making furrows (surcos) with the plough (arado): Aramos el campo antes de la siembra.^[4][1]
2. To make lines like furrows on something, to wrinkle (arrugar).^[4]
3. To go through a fluid, cutting through it.^[4][16]

Word family

• arador
• aradura
• arable
• sobrearar
• arada

Related words

• Latin arō
• Portuguese arar

Usage notes

Arar is also the name of a tree, the African larch (alerce africano) or sandarac tree, and of the juniper (DLE arar¹): the DLE derives it, perhaps through English, from Classical Arabic عرعر (ʿarʿar), while Corriente takes it from Moroccan Arabic ʕǝrʕār and dates it to Luis del Mármol, 1573.^{[4][17][18][2]} The phrase cuantos aran y cavan “everyone” is now out of use.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 313
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. arar
4. ^ 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. arar
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 652
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 598
7. ^ 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. arō
8. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. arar
9. ^ 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. arar
10. ^ 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. 364
11. ^ 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. 200
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 371
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 81
14. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. arar
15. ^ 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. arar
16. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. arar
17. ^ Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. arar
18. ^ Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 220