avanzar

Forms

avanzar (first-person singular present avanzo, first-person singular preterite avancé, past participle avanzado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Catalan avançar, taken over in the 15th century, and later influenced by Italian avanzare in the old commercial sense and by French avancer in the military sense, from which the modern senses come.^[2][3][1][4] In those languages the verb goes back to Vulgar Latin *abantiare, from Late Latin abante (“in front”), which is formed from ab (“from”) and ante (“before”).^[2][5][1]

Meyer-Lübke derived the Spanish verb from Catalan or from Old Occitan avansar.^[2][6] Américo Castro and Terlingen preferred Italian, and Covarrubias, a century and a half later, gave the commercial sense an Italian origin.^[2] Corominas argues for Catalan: the word appears in the mid-15th century, the time of greatest Catalan influence, when Italian loans were still few, and its Latin base did not survive in Spanish or Portuguese.^[2] Prat Sabater counts it among the words that came from Catalan together with other languages.^[7] Portuguese avançar is also from Catalan.^[8]

The nautical adverb avante “forward” was borrowed from Catalan avant in 1406, and ventaja “advantage” comes from French avantage, a derivative of avant.^[3][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds the verb in Fernán Pérez de Guzmán (died 1460), in Pero Tafur's Andanças, the Coplas de Mingo Revulgo and other works of the mid-15th century.^[2] Pérez de Guzmán uses it for “to increase, further”: great knights who sought to creçer e avançar sus estados e rentas “to increase and further their estates and revenues”.^[9] DICCA-XV dates its first record to 1418, and the CDH has auançar “to surpass” still earlier in the Aragonese translations of Juan Fernández de Heredia (1379–1384).^[10][9]

Semantic evolution

The word did not catch on at first: it is missing from the dictionaries of Alonso de Palencia, Nebrija, Cristóbal de las Casas and Percyvall.^[2] Covarrubias records it in the merchants' sense “to be left over in the accounts”, and the military sense “to move troops forward” was brought from French by Melo in 1645.^[2][3] Autoridades gives “to go forward”, the military “to attack the enemy” and the merchants' sense, which it says came from Tuscan; it derives the verb from avante, though some took it from French.^[11] The commercial sense is now obsolete.^[5]

In Nicaragua, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Peru avanzar means “to hurry up”.^[12][5]

Timeline

• 1379–1384 – auançar “to surpass” in Juan Fernández de Heredia's Aragonese translation of Plutarch.^[9]
• 1406 – first record of the nautical avante, from Catalan.^[3]
• 1418 – DICCA-XV's first record.^[10]
• 1450–1455 – Pérez de Guzmán's Generaciones y semblanzas.^[9][2]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the commercial sense “to be left over in the accounts”.^[2][3]
• 1645 – the military sense, in Melo.^[2][3]
• 1705 – first record of avance.^[3]
• 1726 – Autoridades gives the senses “to go forward”, “to attack” and the merchants' sense.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from avante.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To advance, move or put forward: Avanzó el peón dos casillas.^[5][1][14]
2. (intransitive, also pronominal) To go forward, especially of troops: Las tropas avanzaron hacia el río.^[5][1]
3. (intransitive, also pronominal) Of a period of time: to draw towards its end.^[5]
4. (intransitive) To progress or improve in an action, condition or state.^[5]
5. (intransitive, Caribbean, Peru) To hurry up.^[5][12]
6. (intransitive, obsolete) Among merchants, to be left over in the accounts.^[5][11]

Word family

• avance
• avanzada
• avanzado

Related words

• avante
• Catalan avançar
• French avancer

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 416
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. avanzar
4. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 101
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. avanzar
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5
7. ^ Prat Sabater, Marta (2003), Préstamos del catalán en el léxico español, doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, p. 89
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 423
9. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. avanzar
10. ^ a b 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. avanzar
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 492
12. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. avanzar
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 121
14. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. avanzar