cabalgar

Forms

cabalgar (first-person singular present cabalgo, first-person singular preterite cabalgué, past participle cabalgado)^[1] Old Spanish wrote cavalgar and caualgar; the spelling cabalgar is rare in the medieval texts.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cavalgar, inherited from Late Latin caballicō (“to ride”), a verb of the 6th century formed on caballus (“nag, workhorse”).^[3][4][5][1] Wiktionary analyses it as the noun with the verbal suffix -icō, and the verb is first attested in Anthimus and the Lex Salica.^[1]

The same Latin verb is Portuguese cavalgar, Galician cabalgar, Catalan cavalcar, Occitan cavalgar, French chevaucher and Italian cavalcare.^[6][7][8] Romanian încăleca (“to mount a horse”) comes from a compound of it.^[6]

The Latin noun was at first a word for a gelding or a poor working horse, and in Vulgar Latin it replaced equus as the ordinary word for “horse”.^[3][9] De Vaan holds that it was borrowed in Latin, as were Ancient Greek καβάλλης (kabállēs, “nag”) and its kin, but that its ultimate source is unclear.^[10] Wiktionary reports the common view of a borrowing from Gaulish, and an alternative from Iranian.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the form kabalkar in a document of San Juan de la Peña of 1073, still with the /k/ of the Latin verb.^[3][4] The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) already has cavalgar in the sense “to mount a horse” and “to ride”: luego cavalgava “then he mounted”.^[11][12][13]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish the verb meant to get on a horse or other mount and to ride it, and transitively to set someone on a horse, as in the Cid's en el cavallo las cavalgó “he set them on the horse”.^[13][12] The Siete Partidas (1256–1263) ordered that those who rode through a town should ride only horses.^[14][12]

The Diccionario de Autoridades (1726–1739) noted that the common people had given the verb an indecent sense, so that polite speech had dropped it for “mount a horse”, and it survived in artillery for mounting guns on their carriages.^[14] The Academy's dictionary of 1817 gives the transitive sense of a stallion covering a mare, and Salvá (1846) and Domínguez mark the riding senses as old.^[15][16][17] The Academy's edition of 1869 gives “to mount a horse” and “to ride” again as current senses.^[18]

Today the verb is mainly literary for riding, and it is used of things resting on top of other things, as glasses on a nose; a colloquial sense is to have sex with someone.^[5][19] In the Dominican Republic young people use it for “to stroll, go about a place”.^[20][21]

Timeline

• 1073 – kabalkar in a document of San Juan de la Peña.^[3][4]
• c. 1140 – cavalgar in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[3][11]
• 1218–c. 1250 – the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes has caualgare, the earliest hit of the CDH that is not a later copy.^[11]
• 1256–1263 – the Siete Partidas use cabalgar por villa “to ride through a town”.^[12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin equito for cavalgar a cavallo.^[22]
• 1516 – the first record from the Americas, botas para cabalgar “riding boots” in Puerto Rico.^[23]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as “to go on horseback”.^[24]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades records the indecent popular sense and the artillery sense.^[14]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary lists the obsolete noun cabalgar “riding gear”.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, also transitive) To mount a horse or other animal.^[5][1]
2. (intransitive) To ride or go about on horseback: Cabalgamos toda la mañana por la sierra.^[5][1]
3. (intransitive) Of a thing, to rest on top of another: Las gafas le cabalgaban sobre la punta de la nariz.^[5][19]
4. (intransitive, equitation) Of a horse, to move its legs crossing one over the other.^[5]
5. (transitive) Of a stallion or other male animal, to cover the female.^[5]
6. (transitive) To put one thing on top of another.^[5]
7. (transitive, colloquial, also intransitive) To have sex with someone.^[5][1]
8. (Dominican Republic, youth slang) To stroll, to go about a place.^[20][21]

Word family

• cabalgada
• cabalgador
• cabalgadura
• cabalgamiento
• cabalgante
• cabalgazón
• encabalgar
• descabalgar

Related words

• cabalgata
• caballo
• caballero
• Portuguese cavalgar
• Catalan cavalcar

Usage notes

The Academy also lists a homonymous masculine noun cabalgar, now disused, for the whole of the harness and trappings needed to ride a horse; it appears in its dictionary from 1817, and Moliner derives it from the verb.^[15][5][19] Santamaría records it for Mexico from an equestrian dictionary.^[25]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. cabalgar
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 708
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. caballo
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. cabalgar
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1439
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1211
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ 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. cabalgar
12. ^ 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. 564
13. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. 104
14. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 3
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real
16. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 178
17. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 300
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 126
19. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cabalgar
20. ^ 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. cabalgar
21. ^ a b Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. cabalgar
22. ^ 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. cabalgar
23. ^ 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. cabalgar
24. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 466
25. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 161