captura

Forms

captura f (plural capturas)^[1]

Etymology

It is a learned borrowing, borrowed from Latin captūra (“a taking, catching”).^[2][3][4][1] The noun is formed from Latin capiō (“to take, seize”) + -ūra.^[5][1] Corominas treats the word in his article on captar, which is taken from captare (“to try to catch”), the frequentative of the same verb.^[2]

The same Latin word is Italian cattura, French capture, Catalan captura and Portuguese captura.^[6][7] The French word was borrowed in 1406.^[8]

capiō goes back to Proto-Italic *kapjō.^[1] Wiktionary connects it, after the LIV, with Proto-Germanic *habjaną (“to lift, heave”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to the 16th century, in the Nueva Recopilación of the laws.^[2][3] The CDH has it in 1498, in a document on how the alcaldes of the Hermandad of Castile were to proceed in the captura of those they arrested.^[9] Its earlier hit, Nebrija's Vocabulario of 1495, is the Latin equivalent of Spanish toma, not a Spanish record.^[9]

Semantic evolution

In Latin captūra meant the catching of animals, birds and fish, and by metonymy the catch itself.^[5][10] Medieval Latin used it also for the arrest of a person and for a fishery.^[11][8] Spanish took it as a legal word: Autoridades (1729) defines it as the imprisonment of a criminal or debtor and calls it voz puramente latina “a purely Latin word”.^[12] The Academy kept the label forense “legal” through the 19th century, and in 1884 redefined it as the action and effect of capturar.^[13][14]

Modern dictionaries also record the catch in hunting and fishing: Moliner records what has been captured, above all in hunting, and VOX the fish caught.^[15][16] Captura de pantalla is a screenshot, and Wiktionary lists the set phrases busca y captura and búsqueda y captura.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1261–1280 – a single occurrence in the Aragonese Vidal mayor.^[17]
• 1498 – a document on the Hermandad of Castile uses captura of an arrest.^[9]
• 16th century – the Nueva Recopilación, Corominas's first record.^[2][3]
• 1606 – the first record from the Americas, in Chile.^[18]
• 1626 – the verb capturar is recorded in Juan de Funes.^[2]
• 1729 – Autoridades calls it a legal word, purely Latin.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy defines it as the action and effect of capturar, with the etymology from Latin captura.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. capture, the action and effect of capturing; especially the arrest of a wanted person: La policía anunció la captura del fugitivo.^[4][1]
2. The seizing of an animal or thing that resists: la captura de un oso.^[4][16]
3. The catch: what has been captured, especially in hunting or fishing.^[15][16][1]
4. (computing) A screenshot, short for captura de pantalla.^[1]

Word family

• capturar

Related words

• captar
• cautivo
• Latin captūra
• French capture
• Italian cattura

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 837
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. captura
4. ^ a b c 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. captura
5. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. captūra
6. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 103
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ 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. captura
10. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. captura
11. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 140
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 208
15. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. captura
16. ^ a b c Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. captura
17. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
18. ^ 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. captura