cargar

Forms

cargar (first-person singular present cargo, first-person singular preterite cargué, past participle cargado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin carricāre (“to load a cart”).^[2][3][4][1] Old Spanish cargar had the same form.^[5][1] The Latin verb is found in the Visigothic Code and other texts of the Visigothic and Merovingian period in the sense “to cart, carry”, and in a Latin inscription from Africa in the sense “to load”; it became the usual word for this idea in all the Romance languages except Romanian.^[2] It is formed with the suffix -icō on the noun for “wagon”, first recorded in the Lex Salica.^[1]

The western and eastern Ibero-Romance languages kept a fuller form: Portuguese carregar, Galician carregar and Catalan carregar; the word is also French charger, Italian caricare and Old Occitan cargar.^[2][6][7] French shows a shortened Latin carcare.^[8] The learned doublet is carricar.^[1]

carrus, a Gallic kind of wagon, is a Celtic word: Wiktionary takes it from Gaulish *karros, from Proto-Celtic *karros (“wagon”) and Proto-Indo-European *ḱers- (“to run”).^[9][2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is a charter of 972.^[2][3] In the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) Martín Antolínez tells the moneylenders to load the chests: „Carguen las arcas privado”, and later the beasts of burden are loaded with great riches.^[10][5][11]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish it was used of loading animals, ships and people, and Alfonso X's prose has the figurative sense “to impose a burden or obligation” and that of trees cargadas with fruit.^[11][12] Autoridades thought it formed from the noun carga, and gave the figurative senses “to increase, aggravate” and “to lay a burden of taxes or duties on someone”.^[13] The Academy's 1817 edition lists “to charge the enemy”, “to load a firearm” and “to ship goods”, and Cuervo's dictionary classified its many constructions.^[14][15] The modern senses “to charge electrically” and “to load software” follow; colloquial senses include “to fail in an exam”, and cargarse “to break, ruin” (chiefly in Spain) and “to kill”.^[4][1]

In much of Latin America cargar means “to carry on one's person, wear, have”: Malaret's dictionary of 1917 records it for Puerto Rico, the Río de la Plata and Guatemala, and Icazbalceta quotes it from Mexican texts.^[16][17][18] In Cuba, Mexico and Central America it is also used of a male animal covering a female.^[18][19]

Timeline

• 972 – first record, in a charter.^[2][3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has carguen las arcas.^[10]
• 1220–1250 – the noun carga and the verbs descargar and encargar.^[3]
• 1254 – the earliest text in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[20]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija translates it with Latin onero and premo.^[21]
• 1521 – the first record from the Americas, in Cuba.^[22]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades derives it from the noun carga.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from carricare and carrus.^[23]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To put a weight or load on a person or an animal.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To load goods onto a ship or vehicle to transport them: Cargaron la furgoneta antes del amanecer.^[4][1]
3. (transitive) To fill a device with what it needs to work; to load a firearm: cargar la escopeta.^[4]
4. (transitive) To charge a battery or body with electricity.^[4][1]
5. (transitive, computing) To load software or data into memory.^[1]
6. (transitive) To impose a tax, burden or obligation on someone; to blame something on someone.^[4]
7. (transitive) To weight a die so that it falls on one face.^[4]
8. (intransitive) To charge, attack the enemy with force.^[24][25]
9. (transitive, colloquial) To annoy, bother or tire someone.^[4][1]
10. (transitive, colloquial, Spain) To fail someone in an exam.^[4]
11. (reflexive, colloquial) cargarse: to break or ruin something; to kill someone.^[1][26]
12. (transitive, Latin America) To carry about with one, to wear: Siempre carga un paraguas.^[18][16]

Word family

• carga
• cargador
• cargamento
• cargante
• cargazón
• cargo
• cargoso
• descargar
• encargar
• recargar
• sobrecargar
• cargadero

Related words

• carro
• Latin carrus
• Portuguese carregar
• French charger

Usage notes

Cargar el muerto “to take the blame” and cargársela “to get into trouble” are common set phrases.^[1] The verb is regular, with ⟨gu⟩ before ⟨e⟩ (cargué).^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 868
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cargar
4. ^ 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. cargar
5. ^ a b 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. 628
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. carricare
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 1492
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. charger
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. carrus
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. cargar
11. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 100
12. ^ 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. cargar
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 174
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 178
15. ^ Cuervo, Rufino José (1886–1893), Diccionario de construcción y régimen de la lengua castellana, vols. I–II (A–D), París: A. Roger y F. Chernoviz, p. 2, 68
16. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1999), Vocabulario de Puerto Rico, critical ed. by Humberto López Morales, Madrid: Arco/Libros (1st ed. 1937), p. 132
17. ^ García Icazbalceta, Joaquín (1899), Vocabulario de mexicanismos comprobado con ejemplos y comparado con los de otros países hispano-americanos, México: La Europea, p. s.v. cargar
18. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. cargar
19. ^ Ortiz, Fernando (1923), Un catauro de cubanismos: apuntes lexicográficos, La Habana, p. 167
20. ^ 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, p. s.v. cargar
21. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 311
22. ^ 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. cargar
23. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 213
24. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 153
25. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. cargar
26. ^ 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. 114