cerrar

Forms

cerrar (first-person singular present cierro, first-person singular preterite cerré, past participle cerrado)^[1] The oldest Castilian texts also have serrar with s-, in the Fuero de Avilés and in a document of 1210 from Santoña.^[2] Leonese, Aragonese, Navarrese and Galician have zarrar and sarrar.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin serrāre (“to close, shut”), a variant of the Late Latin serāre (“to fasten with a bar”), derived from Latin sera (“bar, bolt”).^[2][4][5][1] The forms with -rr- come from a popular confusion with serra (“saw”) and the verb derived from it, “to saw”; they already appear in a fifth-century palimpsest of Lactantius and in several Latin glosses.^[2][4]

The same verb is Portuguese cerrar, Old Occitan serar, French serrer, Italian serrare and Sardinian serrare, and in Asturian and Aragonese zarrar and zarrar.^[2][6][7] In French and Old Occitan the verb came to mean “to squeeze, press”, and Italian keeps it for locking with a key or bolt beside the general chiudere.^[2][8]

The Latin noun named a detachable bar placed across a door.^[9][10] The OLD compares it, with hesitation, with the homonymous verb meaning “to join, link”, and Wiktionary derives it from that verb, which goes back to Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to bind, line up”).^[9][1] Rey's historical dictionary of French finds no clear etymology for the technical word.^[8]

The initial c- of the Castilian word is due to cercar “to surround, fence in”, with which the verb shared the language of hunting and fortification, especially in the sense “to fence in”.^[2] Corominas thinks it arose as an occasional form and spread because it kept the verb apart from serrar “to saw”.^[2] The stressed /e/ became the diphthong /je/, so the stressed forms of the present are spelt with ⟨ie⟩, which Autoridades already noted as an anomaly.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy), where the Campeador finds the door of his lodging firmly shut for fear of King Alfonso: fallóla bien cerrada “he found it well locked”.^[2][12] The first record in the CDH that survives in a contemporary copy is the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250): De aquel que la carrera … çerrare o mudare “of him who blocks or moves the road”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish the verb already meant “to lock with a bolt”, “to shut in” and “to conclude”.^[13] The prose of Alfonso X uses it for sealing a vessel with clay, closing the mouth and folding a pair of compasses.^[14] For “to shut oneself in”, the reflexive cerrarse long stood beside encerrar, in Saint Teresa, Cervantes and Rojas Zorrilla.^[2]

Nebrija's equivalents include Latin claudo, cludo and circumcludo, and in 1591 Percyvall translated the verb “to locke, to shut, to bolt, to hedge”.^[15][16] Covarrubias records the proverb No ay cerradura donde es de oro la gançua “there is no lock where the picklock is of gold”, and the phrase cerrar la bestia, said of a horse that has changed all its teeth, so that its age can no longer be told.^[17] Later uses extend the verb to institutions, debates, competitions, the ranks of troops and the end of any process, and to turning off taps and lights.^[18][1] In Venezuela cerrar also means to cure someone with spells.^[19]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has the word for a locked door.^[2][12]
• 1210 – a document from Santoña spells it serrar.^[2]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo has the derivative cerradura and the old cerraja “lock”.^[4][2]
• 1250–1279 – the Lapidario of Alfonso X uses it for sealing a vessel.^[14]
• 1351 – first record of cerrajero “locksmith”, in the acts of the Cortes.^[2][4]
• 1524 – the first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[20]
• 1591 – Percyvall glosses it in English as “to locke, to shut, to bolt, to hedge”.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Latin sero and records the proverb about the golden picklock.^[17]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades proposes Latin serare but also a derivation from hierro “iron”.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology Latin serare, from sera.^[21]

Meanings

Verb

1. To lock or bolt a door, window or lid with a lock, bolt or bar so that it cannot be opened.^[5][1]
2. To shut a door or window by fitting it into its frame, so that air and light cannot pass: Cierra la puerta del balcón.^[5]
3. To make the inside of a building, room or container cut off from the outside; to enclose.^[5][1]
4. To close the eyes, the lips or the mouth.^[5]
5. To bring together the free ends of two limbs, or two parts of a thing hinged at the other end.^[5][22]
6. To shut down a shop, business or institution, for the day or for good.^[1][18]
7. To turn off a tap, valve, light or electrical device.^[1][23]
8. To bring to an end; to conclude a deal, a debate or a list: cerrar el trato.^[1][18]
9. (reflexive) Of a wound, to heal over; of a person, to shut oneself off.^[1][5]
10. (phonetics) To close a vowel.^[1]
11. (Venezuela) To cure someone with spells.^[19]

Word family

• cerradura
• cerrazón
• cierre
• encerrar
• cerrado
• cerramiento
• encierro

Related words

• cerraja
• serrar
• Latin sera
• Portuguese cerrar
• French serrer
• English serried

Usage notes

The phrase cerrar en falso means to lock a door so that the bolt does not catch, and cerrarse en falso is said of a wound that heals badly while looking healthy outside.^[5] Other set phrases include cerrar filas “to close ranks” and en un abrir y cerrar de ojos “in the blink of an eye”.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 51
3. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 6072
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cerrar
5. ^ 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. cerrar
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7867
7. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. zarrar
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. serrer
9. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 287
12. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. cerrar
13. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 111
14. ^ a b 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. cerrar
15. ^ 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. cerrar
16. ^ a b Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 103
17. ^ 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. 588
18. ^ a b c 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, 128
19. ^ 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. cerrar
20. ^ 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. cerrar
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. 237
22. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. cerrar
23. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cerrar