cercenar

Forms

cercenar (first-person singular present cerceno, first-person singular preterite cercené, past participle cercenado)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote çerçenar and serçenar.^[2] The Fuero Juzgo has the variant sarcenar.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin circinō (“to make round”).^[4][5][6][1] The Latin verb is derived from circinus (“pair of compasses”).^[7][1]

Portuguese cercear (“to cut at the base, curtail”) has the same specialised sense, as do Italian and Sardinian dialect forms such as Sardinian kirkinare (“to trim round”), while French cerner means “to draw a circle round, enclose”.^[4][8][9] The word is foreign to Occitan and, at least in its modern form, to Catalan;^[10] Corominas suspects that the two old examples of Catalan cercenar (1300 and 1493) may be Aragonese.^[4][11]

The adverbial phrase a cercén “clean off, at the root” (1729; earlier stressed ⟨a cércen⟩, 1584, and cercen alone as an adverb in Nebrija) comes from ad circinum (“in a circle”), a phrase used by Vitruvius.^[4][5] Corominas notes a single uncertain Latin variant circen, which would explain the Spanish and Portuguese adverbs well, and suggests an adverb *circine built on the noun used as an adjective.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first records are the Libro de Apolonio (c. 1240, known from a 14th-century copy) and the Fuero Juzgo.^[4][10] In the Apolonio the reflexive means “to have one's beard or hair cut”, and the barbers tienen priessa de cercenar “are in a hurry to trim”.^[4] The Fuero Juzgo (c. 1250–1260) uses it for clipping coins: Quien faz morauedís falsos o los raye o los cercena “whoever makes false maravedís, or scratches or clips them”.^[10][12]

Semantic evolution

Latin already used the verb for shaping the crowns of trees into a round form; from there the meaning passed to “to prune”, to “to cut the beard or hair”, one of the oldest Spanish senses, and finally to “to trim” anything.^[4][5][13] The 13th-century texts use it for clipping the tips of a bird's wings, for hair cut round the head and for clipping coins, a sense still in the laws quoted by Autoridades.^[10][14][15]

Autoridades (1729) defines it as cutting something round evenly, and by extension as taking a little from something so that it is not missed, and as reducing authority, a household or expenses.^[15] Salvá (1846) adds an obsolete “to cut into thin strips” and a jocular “to crop the hair”, as was done to convicts sentenced to flogging.^[16] Today the verb is used for cutting off a limb, in medicine almost as a synonym of amputar, and figuratively for curtailing rights or powers.^[17][18][19] In Puerto Rico it can mean “to move about from one place to another”.^[20]

Timeline

• c. 1240 – the Libro de Apolonio uses cercenarse for having the hair or beard cut.^[4][5]
• 1250 – the Moamín speaks of a bird with cercenadas las puntas de las alas “the tips of its wings clipped”.^[10]
• c. 1250–1260 – the Fuero Juzgo uses it for clipping coins.^[10][12]
• 1252 – the Cortes of Alcalá de Henares speak of men going about cercenados aderredor “with their hair cut round”.^[10]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin circumcido.^[21]
• 1564 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico.^[22]
• 1584 – the adverbial phrase a cércen is first recorded.^[4]
• 1729 – Autoridades records the senses “to take away little by little” and “to reduce”.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology Latin circinare “to make round”.^[23]

Meanings

Verb

1. To cut off the ends or extremities of something: La hélice le cercenó dos dedos.^[6][17]
2. To reduce, to curtail: El decreto cercena la autonomía de los municipios.^[6][19]
3. (medicine) To cut off a part of the body, to amputate.^[18]

Word family

• cercenador
• cercenadura
• cercenamiento
• cercén

Related words

• Portuguese cercear
• French cerner

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock
3. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 40
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cercenar
6. ^ a b c 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. cercenar
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon
10. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
11. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll
12. ^ 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
13. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses
14. ^ 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)
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 279
16. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá
17. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial
18. ^ a b Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es
19. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos
20. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. cercenar
21. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 324
22. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies
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. 236