concertar

Forms

concertar (first-person singular present concierto, first-person singular preterite concerté, past participle concertado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin concertō (“to contend, dispute”).^[2][3][4][1] Corominas notes that it was kept in Italian and the three Ibero-Romance languages, while French concerter is a loan from Italian;^[2][5] the cognates are Italian concertare, Portuguese concertar, Galician concertar and Catalan concertar.^[1][6] The Alcover–Moll dictionary takes the Catalan verb as probably Italian too,^[7] and Bénaben treats the Spanish one as a learned borrowing from Latin.^[8]

The usual Latin sense was “to fight, contend”, but Cicero already used it for “to debate, discuss”; from there Corominas traces “to agree, settle”, as in making peace, then “to arrange, put in agreement”.^[2] From “to bring into agreement” came the sense of musicians playing together.^[2] Spitzer, whom he cites, took the basic idea to be striving together in harmony.^[2] The DHLF gives the Christian Latin sense “to act toward a common aim”.^[5]

The Latin verb is formed from con- (“with, together”) and certō (“to fight, strive”),^[9][1] which comes from certus (“decided, sure”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the first record to the Calila e Dimna of 1251, which the CDH reads in a copy of the late 14th or early 15th century: a sage finds writings in the language of India, translates them into that of Persia et conçertólas “and put them in order”.^[2][3][10] DEMel lists earlier forms, conçiertense in the Fuero de Coria, which it dates to the beginning of the 13th century, and con certelo in a Seville document of 1248.^[11] The first hit in the CDH in a contemporary manuscript is in the Repartimiento de Murcia (1257–1271), whose scribes say the book was concertado, collated, with the king's copy.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Notaries long used the verb for checking a copy against its original, as in the Fuero de Molina and the Libro de los fueros de Castiella, and in Santo Domingo in 1514.^[10][12] Don Juan Manuel (1335) used it for coming to an agreement,^[13] and the 15th century for settling a price, as in a knight's he concertado mi rescate “I have agreed my ransom”.^[14] Nebrija (c. 1495) gave concertarse as Latin convenio “to agree”.^[15] The noun concierto “agreement” appears about 1400, and its musical sense in 1655, after Italian.^[3]

Covarrubias (1611) glossed it as to compose, adjust and agree, and called an orderly, measured man hombre concertado.^[16] In the Quijote it means to agree terms with someone, also to hire oneself out by the month or the day.^[17] In Mexico in 1549 bones were concertados, set.^[12] The DLE adds a hunting sense, of beaters who go over the woods with hounds to find where the game is, and the grammatical sense of agreement.^[4]

Timeline

• 1248 – con certelo in a Seville document.^[11]
• 1251 – conçertólas in Calila e Dimna, in a later copy.^[2][10]
• 1257–1271 – the Repartimiento de Murcia: a book concertado with the king's.^[10]
• 1335 – Don Juan Manuel uses it for “to come to an agreement”.^[13]
• c. 1400 – the derivative concierto “agreement”.^[3]
• 1495 – the derivatives desconcertar and desconcierto.^[3]
• 1514 – the first record in the Americas, in Santo Domingo, for collating a copy.^[12]
• 1611 – Covarrubias: to compose, adjust, agree.^[16]
• 1655 – the musical sense of concierto, after Italian.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To arrange or put in order the parts of a thing, or several things.^[4]
2. (transitive) To agree on the price of something.^[4]
3. (transitive, also reflexive) To settle or agree on a deal: Concertaron una cita para el lunes.^[4][1]
4. (transitive, also reflexive) To bring different things or intentions to a common purpose.^[4]
5. (transitive, music) To harmonize voices or instruments.^[4]
6. (transitive) To collate or compare one thing with another.^[4]
7. (hunting) Of beaters: to go over the woods with the hounds, in separate parties, to find out from the tracks what game there is and where it lies.^[4]
8. (intransitive) To agree or correspond (concordar).^[4]
9. (grammar) Of two or more inflected words: to agree in gender, number or person.^[4]
10. (reflexive, obsolete) To groom oneself.^[4]

Word family

• desconcertar
• concierto
• concertaje

Related words

• concertación
• Latin concertō
• Italian concertare

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; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 166
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. concertar
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. concertar
5. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 924
7. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. concertar
8. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. concertar
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
11. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. concertar
12. ^ a b c 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. concertar
13. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 128
14. ^ 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. 743
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
16. ^ 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. 497
17. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 301