cercar

Forms

cercar (first-person singular present cerco, first-person singular preterite cerqué, past participle cercado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cercar, inherited from Late Latin circō (“to go round, traverse”).^[2][3][4][1] The Latin verb is found in glosses, in the land surveyors' texts and in inscriptions from the 2nd or 3rd century AD.^[2][5] It is formed on circus (“circle”), or on the preposition circa (“around”), itself formed on the noun.^[6][7][1]

The same Latin verb is Catalan cercar, Occitan cercar, French chercher, Italian cercare and Romanian cerca.^[5][8] In most of these it means “to look for”, having replaced Latin quaerō, and Old Catalan and Aragonese had that sense too.^[5][9] Some scholars took it for a hunters' word, from the closing circle of hunters and dogs around the game.^[5] Joan Coromines thought rather of the speech of Roman soldiers.^[5] The English word search goes back to the French verb.^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the verb to 1099, from a document cited by Cuervo;^[10] cerca “siege” is older, from 1076.^[2][3] In the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) the two kings Fáriz and Galve come al bueno de mio Cid en Alcocer le van cercar “to besiege the good Cid in Alcocer”, and the Liber regum (c. 1200) says that Sennacherib cercó una cibdath “besieged a city”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In Alfonso X's prose the verb means to enclose a place with walls, to besiege it, and to go round it: the Lapidario speaks of the great sea que çerca el mundo “that surrounds the world”.^[12] His book of games names a variant of noughts and crosses cercar la liebre “to surround the hare”.^[12] Old Spanish also used cercar for “to bring near”, a sense now obsolete;^[10] Moliner treats it as a separate verb formed from the adverb cerca.^[4][10]

Covarrubias (1611) derived the word from Latin circumdare and said it was properly used of cities, because they were built round.^[13] The Diccionario de Autoridades, which derives it from the noun cerco, has the senses “to fence in”, “to besiege” and, figuratively, “to surround a person as a retinue”.^[14] The Academy's dictionaries from 1817 to 1869 record the phrase cercar a uno de trabajos “to heap misfortunes on someone”.^[15][16] In the Americas, orchards çercadas are recorded in Mexico City in 1536, and in Tabasco cercar is to tuck in the mosquito net around a bed.^[17][18]

Timeline

• 1099 – first record of the verb, according to Corominas.^[2][19]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid (in a 14th-century copy) uses it for besieging Alcocer.^[11]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España: a city surrounded de muros e de torres.^[12]
• 1283 – the game cercar la liebre in Alfonso X's book of games.^[12]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin dictionary gives it for Latin circumdo, circumvallo and consepio.^[20]
• 1536 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico City.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from circumdare.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives its etymology from Latin circare and circus.^[21]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To fence in or wall in a place, so that it is closed off and protected: Cercaron la huerta con una tapia.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To besiege a town or fortress.^[4][10]
3. (transitive) Of a crowd, to surround someone or something: Los fotógrafos cercaron a la actriz.^[4][10]
4. (obsolete, also pronominal) To bring or come near; acercar.^[4]

Word family

• cercado
• descercar
• cercador

Related words

• cerco
• cerca
• circo
• French chercher
• English search

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 42
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cerco
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. cercar
5. ^ a b c d e 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, 674
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. cercar
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. chercher
8. ^ a b Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 119
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. cercar
10. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cercar
11. ^ 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. cercar
12. ^ a b c d 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. cercar
13. ^ 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. 585
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 279
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 196
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 169
17. ^ 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. cercar
18. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 238
19. ^ 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, 123
20. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. cercar
21. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 236