cara

Forms

cara f (plural caras)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin cara (“face”), from Ancient Greek κάρα (kára, “head”).^[2][1][3] Corominas calls its origin uncertain: the Greek word belonged only to poetry (Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar) and meant “head”, though Sophocles sometimes used it for the face, and there is no sure evidence for it in Vulgar Latin.^[4] Its descendants are limited to Hispania, Gaul, Rhaeto-Romance and Genoese, where a Greek loan would be expected to be commoner in Italy and Romania.^[4] Wiktionary notes that the Latin word is attested only once in a late glossary, labelled as Greek, and then in medieval Latin documents from Spain.^[1]

Corominas weighed a pre-Roman, Indo-European substrate word, related to the Greek word but not taken from it, like the words behind French joue (“cheek”) or Italian branca (“paw”).^[4] He concluded, however, that the Greek etymology is probable after all, supposing that this grand, poetic word circulated as soldiers' slang among Greek and Roman officers and passed from the army into Vulgar Latin.^[4] Coromines repeats this view in his Catalan dictionary.^[5] The DHLF says Late Latin cara is perhaps attested from the 6th century, and Cabrera cites it from Corippus.^[6][7]

The same word is Portuguese cara, Galician cara, Asturian cara, Catalan cara, Occitan cara and Old French chiere, whence French chère.^[8][4][1] The Greek word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *ḱr̥h₂-(e)s-n- (“top of the head”), from the root *ḱerh₂- (“head; horn; top”), which also gave Latin cornū and cerebrum.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy), where the hero la cara se santigua “crosses his face” and the poem speaks of los ojos de la cara “the eyes of the face”.^[4][9][10] The Cid already uses de cara “facing” and cara por cara “face to face”.^[9] An earlier hit in the CDH, Qui percusserit uicinum in cara in the Fuero de Madrid, is a Latin sentence.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In Berceo the word already means “expression, countenance” and “sight”, as in ¿con qual cara verné ante el nuestro Sennor? “with what face shall I come before our Lord?”.^[12][13] Alfonso X uses it for the face and for its expression, and in the phrases cara a cara and caras por caras “in the presence of”.^[14] Covarrubias records an adverbial use, cara “towards”, in cara arriba, cara atrás.^[15] García de Diego notes that this survives in popular Castilian and Galician, with Navarrese carra.^[8]

The word also came to mean the front or surface of a thing, the obverse of a coin (heads, opposed to cruz), and in geometry a face of a solid.^[2] The colloquial sense “nerve, cheek” belongs with descarado “shameless”, recorded from 1570.^[2][3] In the Canaries caras named the whitest sugar from the base of the sugar loaf, recorded in 1517.^[16] In Bolivia cara is a white, well-off city dweller, and in El Salvador a lie.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses cara for the face.^[4][3][11]
• 1141–1235 – the Latin Fuero de Madrid has in cara.^[11]
• c. 1205–1250 – the Razón de amor praises a cara fresca como maçana “face fresh as an apple”.^[11]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario speaks of the skin of the face.^[14]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses it Latin vultus.^[18]
• 1515 – first record in the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[19]
• 1517 – Canarian caras, a white sugar.^[16]
• 1570 – first record of descarado.^[3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Greek kara “head” and records the adverb cara “towards”.^[20][15]
• 1729 – the Diccionario de Autoridades follows Aldrete and Covarrubias in the Greek etymology.^[21]

Meanings

Noun

1. The face: the front of the human head from the forehead to the chin.^[2][1]
2. The front part of the head of some animals.^[2]
3. A facial expression; look: Me miró con mala cara.^[2][1]
4. The front or façade of something.^[2][1]
5. The surface or side of something, such as a sheet of paper.^[2][1]
6. The obverse of a coin or medal; heads, as opposed to cruz.^[2][1]
7. Presence: Díselo a la cara.^[2]
8. The look or appearance of a thing or matter.^[2]
9. (colloquial) nerve, cheek: ¡Menuda cara tiene tu primo!^[2][1]
10. (agriculture) A set of adjoining cuts made in a tree.^[2]
11. (geometry) Each plane of a dihedral angle, and each of the surfaces bounding a polyhedron.^[2][1]
12. (colloquial) A shameless person; also as an adjective.^[2]

Word family

• carado
• carear
• carilla
• descarado
• encarar
• caradura
• cariacontecido
• carinegro
• carirredondo
• carita
• carota
• careta
• descaro

Related words

• Portuguese cara
• French chère

Usage notes

The Academy lists a second cara, the name of an Amerindian people of the coast and northern highlands of Ecuador and of their language, taken from the place name Cara, a bay where they founded a city.^[2] Common phrases include cara a cara, dar la cara “to face up to something” and echar en cara “to reproach”.^[1][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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. cara
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cara
4. ^ 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, 839
5. ^ 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, 543
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ Cabrera, Ramón (1837), Diccionario de etimologías de la lengua castellana, 2 vols., Madrid: Imprenta de Marcos Bueno, p. s.v. cara
8. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. cara
9. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 121
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. 621
11. ^ 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. cara
12. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 213
13. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 99
14. ^ a b c 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. cara
15. ^ 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. 430
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. cara
17. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. cara
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 311
19. ^ 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. cara
20. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 429
21. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. cara