cavilar

Forms

cavilar (first-person singular present cavilo, first-person singular preterite cavilé, past participle cavilado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin cavillor (“to jest, banter; to use sophistries”).^[2][3][1] The DLE quotes the verb in its active form, which Du Cange also records.^[4][5] The Latin verb is formed from cavilla (“jesting, banter”).^[2][6][1] The OLD connects this noun with calvor (“to deceive”), while Wiktionary derives it from cavus (“hollow”), as if “hollow talk”, and denies the link with the verb for “deceive”.^[6][1]

Bénaben notes that the Spanish sense “to think hard” is far from Latin “to jest”, but follows from the other Latin sense “to argue with sophistries”.^[7] Corominas gives the first Spanish sense as “to reason with subtlety”.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the ordenamiento issued at Madrigal on 27 April 1476, which speaks of people who raised many quibbles para cauilar la dicha ley “to twist the said law”.^[8][2] The nouns cavilación and caviloso are older, from the Corbacho (1438).^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th century the verb meant to reason falsely or to argue against something: Villalón writes of pagans who tried cavilar y contradezir la ley de Cristo.^[8] Percyvall (1591) glossed it “to cavil, to wrangle”.^[9] The Diccionario de Autoridades still defined it as thinking up reasons that are false but look true, in order to deceive.^[10]

From 1817 the Academy defined it as fixing the mind on something with excessive, idle subtlety.^[11][12] From this came the sense that prevails today, “to think persistently about something”.^[2] Moliner and VOX stress the worry that goes with it.^[13][14] The first record in the Americas is from Buenos Aires in 1821.^[15]

Timeline

• 1438 – cavilación and caviloso in the Corbacho.^[3]
• 1476 – first record of the verb, in the Madrigal ordenamiento.^[8][2]
• c. 1540 – Villalón uses it for arguing against Christian doctrine.^[8]
• 1591 – Percyvall renders it “to cavil, to wrangle”.^[9]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it as inventing deceptive reasons.^[10]
• 1817 – the Academy defines it as dwelling on something with vain subtlety.^[11]
• 1821 – first record in the Americas, in Buenos Aires.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology, from Latin cavillari.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive and intransitive) To think about something hard or deeply; to ponder.^[4][1]
2. To brood over something with worry, looking for an explanation or a way out: Pasó la noche cavilando sobre qué decirle.^[13][14]

Word family

• cavilación
• caviloso

Related words

• Latin cavilla
• English cavil

Usage notes

In Asturian Spanish it means to think something over from every side.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 930
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cavilar
4. ^ a b 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. cavilar
5. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre, p. s.v. cavillare
6. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. cavilar
8. ^ 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. cavilar
9. ^ a b Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 90
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 241
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 190
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 153
13. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cavilar
14. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. cavilar
15. ^ 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. cavilar
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 228
17. ^ Rato y Hevia, Apolinar de (1891), Vocabulario de las palabras y frases bables que se hablaron antiguamente y de las que hoy se hablan en el Principado de Asturias, Madrid: Manuel G. Hernández, p. 33