comportar

Forms

comportar (first-person singular present comporto, first-person singular preterite comporté, past participle comportado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin comportō (“to carry together, bring together”), formed from Latin con- + portō (“to carry”).^[2][3][1][4] The pronominal use “to behave”, recorded from 1817, is modelled on French se comporter.^[2][5]

The same Latin verb gave Portuguese comportar, Catalan comportar, Italian comportare and French comporter, which in Italian and Ibero-Romance meant “to bear, tolerate”.^[6][5] Nascentes calls the Portuguese verb a learned word.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The BDELC dates the sense “to suffer, tolerate”, now old-fashioned, to 1348.^[2] In the late 14th century Fernández de Heredia uses it in this sense: liugerament soferi et comporta vituperios “he lightly suffered and bore insults”.^[8][9] Lanchetas records a use of the verb for “to behave” in Berceo's San Lorenzo.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The concrete Latin sense, to carry something together with another person, survived only in dictionaries: Alonso cites comportar y iuntar from Palencia's Vocabulario of about 1490, and Autoridades in 1729 notes it is little used.^[9][11] Autoridades still gave the sense “to bear, tolerate” with quotations from the Recopilación, the chronicle of Juan II and Santillana.^[11] The Academy marked the sense “to carry together” as old in 1817, and the DLE now marks both old senses as obsolete.^[12][3]

In 1855 Baralt defended the verb against those who rejected it as a Gallicism, quoting Zurita, the Celestina and Cervantes.^[13] The sense “to bring about, involve” was recorded in Argentina, Colombia and Uruguay by Malaret in 1946; it is now the DLE's first sense.^[14][3] The pronominal verb, first in the Academy's dictionary in 1817 as a synonym of portarse, is now the commonest use.^[12][2]

Timeline

• 1348 – first record, in the sense “to tolerate”.^[2]
• 1376–1396 – Fernández de Heredia uses it often, for “to bear” and for “to conduct oneself”.^[8][15]
• c. 1490 – Palencia's Vocabulario glosses Latin contignare with comportar y iuntar.^[9]
• 1517 – the first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo: trabajos que pudieren comportar.^[16]
• 1729 – Autoridades gives the senses “to carry together” and “to bear, tolerate”.^[11]
• 1817 – comportarse “to behave” enters the Academy's dictionary.^[12][2]
• mid-19th century – the derivative comportamiento appears.^[2]
• 1946 – Malaret records the sense “to bring about” in Argentina, Colombia and Uruguay.^[14]

Meanings

Verb

1. To involve or entail: El cargo comporta muchas obligaciones.^[3][1][17]
2. (obsolete) To tolerate, put up with.^[3][1]
3. (obsolete) To carry something together with another person.^[3][17]
4. (pronominal) To behave in a certain way: Se comportó con mucha calma.^[3][1]
5. (pronominal) To behave properly: Los niños no saben comportarse en la mesa.^[3][1]
6. (pronominal) Of a thing, to work or act in a certain way.^[3]

Word family

• comportamiento

Related words

• portar
• soportar
• Latin comportō
• French comporter

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. portar
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. comportar
4. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. comportō
5. ^ a b Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 594
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. comportāre
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. comportar
8. ^ 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. comportar
9. ^ a b c 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. 738
10. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 243
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 456
12. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 219
13. ^ Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 151
14. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 251
15. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. comportar
16. ^ 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. comportar
17. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. comportar