cascar

Forms

cascar (first-person singular present casco, first-person singular preterite casqué, past participle cascado)^[1] A variant caxcar, a purely phonetic one, is common in the 16th century, for instance in Juan de Valdés's Diálogo de la lengua.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cascar, inherited from Vulgar Latin *quassicāre, a derivative of Latin quassō (“to shake, brandish; strike, shatter”), which is the frequentative of quatiō (“to shake”).^[2][3][4][1] Latin glosses already give the verb the whole range of the Romance senses: “to damage, to rot, to crush, to break, to shake”.^[2] The Latin group /kʷa/ usually stays in Spanish as ⟨cua-⟩, but before the stress it is sometimes reduced to ⟨ca-⟩, as in catorce, casi and cantidad.^[2]

The same verb is Portuguese cascar, Catalan cascar and Occitan cascar, which means “to shake” or “to harrow”.^[2][5] The verb Sardinian cascai (“to break”) of Campidano is a borrowing from Spanish.^[2][1] Wiktionary names quejar as a doublet;^[1][6][7] Cunha and Coromines derive its Portuguese and Catalan counterparts from another derivative, *quassiāre.^[1][6][7]

Corominas rejects two other explanations: a derivative of cassō (“to annul”), a rare word that may itself be a vulgar pronunciation of the same verb, and Krüger's onomatopoeic origin, which in his view confuses the present-day sound of the word with its history.^[2] In his Catalan dictionary he allows that expressive words may have influenced the family, mainly the derivatives.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first verbal record is Ferrer Sayol's translation of Palladius's treatise on agriculture (1380–1385), where reeds are cut and crushed: picalas hombre & las casca bien “one chops them and crushes them well”.^[9][10] The DEMel already has the participle cascado in Alfonso XI's Libro de la montería (1342–1350).^[11] Corominas dated the verb no earlier than Antón de Montoro (died 1480) and Nebrija, and Alonso cites the Tostado (1445–1455) for breaking “so large bodies made of different timbers”.^[2][3][12]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is to break or split something brittle, especially fruit and vessels;^[12][13] Nebrija rendered it with Latin quatio and quasso.^[12][13] Covarrubias in 1611 defined it as breaking or cracking a vessel or hollow thing.^[14] The Autoridades (1729) added the sense “to beat someone with the hand or a stick”, with a quotation from Calderón, and supposed that the verb came from casco.^[15] The Academy marked an old figurative sense “to trouble, to torment” as obsolete from 1817, and in 1884 added “to chatter” and “to break someone's health”.^[16][17]

In modern colloquial Spanish cascar also means to damage something, to die, and to talk a great deal.^[4][18] Aragonese and Latin American Spanish use cascarle a for working hard at something (cascarle al derecho romano), and in Chile the verb means to leave a place in a hurry.^[19][20][21] The reflexive cascársela is vulgar for masturbating.^[1][22]

Timeline

• 1342–1350 – the participle cascado in Alfonso XI's Libro de la montería.^[11]
• 1380–1385 – casca in Ferrer Sayol's Libro de Palladio.^[9]
• 1445–1455 – the Tostado uses quebrar o cascar of large wooden bodies.^[12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses it with Latin quatio and quasso.^[13]
• 1546 – the first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[23]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as breaking a vessel or hollow thing.^[14]
• 1729 – the Autoridades records the sense “to beat”.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy adds “to chatter” and gives an etymology from Latin quassare.^[17]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also reflexive) To crack or split something brittle, such as a nut, an egg or a glass: Casca dos huevos en la sartén.^[4][1][24]
2. (transitive, colloquial) To hit or beat someone.^[4][1]
3. (transitive, colloquial, also reflexive) To damage or break something.^[4][18]
4. (transitive, colloquial, also reflexive) To break someone's health; to make the voice hoarse.^[4][24]
5. (intransitive, colloquial) To die (morir); to snuff it.^[4][1]
6. (intransitive, colloquial) To chatter (charlar), to talk a lot.^[4][1]
7. (intransitive, Chile, colloquial) To leave a place quickly.^[21]

Word family

• cascado
• cascadura
• cascajo
• cascamiento
• cascote
• casquijo
• cascaruleta
• cascanueces
• cascarrabias
• descascar

Related words

• cascársela
• casco
• cáscara
• quejar
• English quash
• Latin quassō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 905
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cascar
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. cascar
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. quassicare
6. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2786
7. ^ a b 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. 6, 921
8. ^ 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, 611
9. ^ 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. cascar
10. ^ 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. cascar
11. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. cascar
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. 642
13. ^ a b c Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 312
14. ^ 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. 453
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 213
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 185
17. ^ 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. 222
18. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. cascar
19. ^ Borao, Jerónimo (1908), Diccionario de voces aragonesas, 2nd ed., Zaragoza: Imprenta del Hospicio Provincial, p. 12
20. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 331
21. ^ 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. cascar
22. ^ León, Víctor (1980), Diccionario de argot español y lenguaje popular, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, p. s.v. cascar
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. cascar
24. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cascar