cansar

Forms

cansar (first-person singular present canso, first-person singular preterite cansé, past participle cansado)^[1]

Etymology

It is most probably inherited from Latin campsō (“to sail round, double (a cape); to turn aside”), the explanation of the DCECH, the BDELC and the DLE.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin verb was a sailors' word: Ennius uses it of ships doubling the cape of Leucas.^[5][6] It was taken from Ancient Greek κάμψαι (kámpsai), the aorist infinitive of κάμπτω (kámptō, “to bend, turn”).^[1][2][4]

Corominas, following Spitzer, takes the sense “to turn aside (from a road)”, which is found in the Peregrinatio Aetheriae, as the starting point: from there the verb came to mean “to stop (doing something)” and then “to tire”.^[2][3] He points out that almost all the medieval examples are intransitive, meaning either “to grow tired” or “to cease”, as in the Fuero de Zorita, where it is paired with cesar; the transitive use is rare before Nebrija.^[2][7] Italian cansare “to avoid” and Logudorese kansare “to avoid” keep the nautical sense of rounding an obstacle.^[8][2] García de Diego also starts from the Latin verb, in the sense “to turn round”, and cites the Silos glosses, which explain flectit (“bends”) with ⟨cansat⟩.^[9]

Diez, Cuervo, Meyer-Lübke and Malkiel derived the verb instead from quassō (“to shake, shatter”); the REW finds the Latin verb too far in meaning.^[2][8] Corominas and García de Diego reject this etymon because it cannot explain the ⟨n⟩ of the Spanish verb, and because Latin ⟨qua-⟩ usually gives ⟨cua-⟩ in the Peninsula.^[2][9] The cognates include Catalan cansar, Occitan cansar, Portuguese cansar and Galician cansar.^[10][11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The participle cansado is recorded in a charter of 1092, and the verb itself first in Berceo.^[2][3] The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) says of two fighters Cansados son de ferir ellos amos a dos “both of them are tired of striking”, and in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200) Esau comes home cansado del canpo “tired from the field”.^[7][12]

Semantic evolution

In the 13th century the verb was mostly intransitive, “to grow tired” and “to cease”: Berceo says that Millán never wearied (nunqua cansava) of serving God, and the fueros of Cáceres and Alcalá speak of oxen that tire.^[7][2] In Alfonso X's prose it already means “to annoy” as well as “to tire”.^[13] Nebrija's Spanish–Latin dictionary has the transitive cansar a otra cosa, Latin lasso, fatigo.^[14]

The Diccionario de Autoridades (1729) gave three senses: to tire someone, to annoy with impertinence, and to wear an enemy out with delays.^[15] The Academy's dictionary of 1817 added the exhausting of soil by repeated crops and marked the old intransitive use “to grow tired” as obsolete;^[16][17] Salvá also gave the old sense “to cease”.^[16][17] The tired land is already in a letter from Santa Marta of 1535: hallé la tierra cansada.^[18] Today the reflexive cansarse is the everyday “to get tired”, and no cansarse de means doing something again and again.^[4][1]

Timeline

• 1092 – the participle cansado in a charter.^[2][3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid (in a 14th-century copy): Cansados son de ferir.^[7]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar: Esau cansado del canpo.^[7][12]
• 1218–c. 1250 – the Fuero de Zorita pairs cansar with cesar “to cease”.^[7]
• 1220–1250 – the adjective canso “tired” in Berceo.^[3][2]
• 1438 – first record of descansar “to rest”.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives the transitive cansar a otra cosa.^[14]
• 1495 – first record of cansancio.^[3]
• 1535 – first record in the Americas, at Santa Marta, of worn-out land.^[18]
• 1729 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it.^[15]
• 1817 – the Academy adds the sense of exhausting the soil.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. To tire or fatigue; pronominal, to get tired: Me cansé de tanto caminar.^[4][1][19]
2. (agriculture) To exhaust the soil, through the crops grown or the fertiliser used; also pronominal.^[4][19]
3. To annoy or weary someone; pronominal, to grow weary of something: Ya se cansó de esperar.^[4][19]
4. To make someone lose interest; also intransitive, to become tedious.^[4][19]
5. (obsolete, intransitive) To feel tired.^[4]

Word family

• cansado
• cansancio
• cansera
• canso
• descansar
• incansable
• cansón

Related words

• Latin campsō
• Portuguese cansar

Usage notes

No cansarse de + infinitive means to keep doing something insistently, or to enjoy doing it again and again.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 809
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. cansar
4. ^ 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. cansar
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. campsō
6. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. campso
7. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. cansar
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. campsāre
9. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. cansar
10. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 2, 477
11. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 687
12. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cansar
13. ^ 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. cansar
14. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 309
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 119
16. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 169
17. ^ a b Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 203
18. ^ a b 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. cansar
19. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cansar