crecer

Forms

crecer (first-person singular present crezco, first-person singular preterite crecí, past participle crecido)^[1] Old Spanish wrote crecer, creçer, cresçer and crescer.^[2][1] The Latinising spelling crescer still alternated with crecer in printed books of the 15th to 17th centuries.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cresçer, inherited from Latin crēscō (“to come into being; to grow”).^[4][5][6][1] The same Latin verb is Portuguese crescer, Galician crecer, Asturian crecer, Catalan créixer, Occitan créisser, French croître, Italian crescere and Romanian crește.^[7][8][1] The DÉRom reconstructs it for Proto-Romance with the sense “to grow gradually”, as an intransitive and a transitive verb.^[9]

The Latin verb is a present in -scō formed on the root of creō (“to create”).^[10][11] De Vaan derives its stem ⟨krē-⟩ from a PIE root meaning “to become bigger, stronger”, and compares Slavic verbs meaning “to heal”.^[12] Wiktionary gives the chain *krēskō, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱreh₁- (“to grow, become bigger”).^[1] Gómez de Silva connects the Latin verbs in ⟨-sco⟩ with the Spanish verbs in -ecer.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb appears in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy): Yal crece la barba e vale allongando “now his beard grows and keeps getting longer”.^[14][4][15] The Cid also uses the construction crecer una cosa a uno, as when the Cid's company grows: que·l' crece conpaña.^[16][15]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish already used the verb for bodily growth, for any increase, for the waxing moon and for a rise in rank or power.^[17] Covarrubias in 1611 listed people, animals and trees, buildings under construction, the sea at high tide, prices, virtue and malice as things that grow.^[18] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1729) gave the same range and noted the irregular forms crezco and crezca.^[19] The Academy's dictionary of 1884 listed the rise in a coin's value and the obsolete transitive sense “to surpass”.^[20]

Baralt condemned the reflexive crecerse “to grow bolder” as a Gallicism in 1855, but the DLE now lists it.^[21][6] Cervantes has the simile crecer como la espuma “to grow like foam”, which Cejador explains as said above all of someone who rises suddenly in rank.^[22] In rural Honduras and northwest Argentina the verb is transitive, “to raise (a child)”.^[23]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid (in a 14th-century copy).^[14][4][16]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar: Jacob and Esau grow up (Crecieron amos).^[16]
• c. 1223 – the Semejanza del mundo: a stone that waxes and wanes with the moon.^[16]
• c. 1250 – first record of crecimiento.^[5]
• 1444 – first record of the noun creciente.^[5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives the Latin equivalents augeo, augesco and glisco.^[14]
• 1515 – first record in the Americas, in Tierra Firme, of a river that rises and falls.^[24]
• 16th century – first record of crecida “flood”.^[5]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it; the BDELC dates creces from the same year, the DCECH from 1643.^[18][5][4]
• 1729 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines it.^[19]
• 1855 – Baralt condemns crecerse as a Gallicism.^[21]

Meanings

Verb

1. Of a living being, to grow; of a person, especially in height: Mi sobrino ha crecido mucho este año.^[6][1]
2. Of a thing, to increase as material is added; of a river, to rise.^[6]
3. To increase in size, number or intensity: Crece la tensión entre los dos países.^[6][25]
4. (knitting) To add stitches regularly so that the next row has more; mostly transitive.^[6]
5. Of the Moon, to wax.^[6]
6. Of the value of a coin, to rise.^[6]
7. (obsolete, transitive) To surpass.^[6]
8. (pronominal) Of a person, to gain authority, importance or boldness: El equipo se creció en la segunda parte.^[6][25]
9. (Honduras, northwest Argentina; rural; transitive) To raise a child.^[23]

Word family

• creces
• crecimiento
• crecida
• creciente
• crecido
• recrecer

Related words

• crescendo
• Latin crēscō
• Portuguese crescer
• English crescent

Usage notes

Crecer is irregular in the present: crezco, crezca.^[19][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. crecer
3. ^ Henríquez Ureña, Pedro (2015), Obras completas, vol. 12: 1936–1940 III, ed. Miguel D. Mena, Santo Domingo: Ministerio de Cultura, p. 80
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 234
5. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. crecer
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. crecer
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. crēscĕre
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. crecer
9. ^ Buchi, Éva; Schweickard, Wolfgang, eds. (2008–), Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom), Nancy: ATILF, http://www.atilf.fr/DERom, p. s.v. crēscĕre
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. crescō
11. ^ 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. crecer
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 200
14. ^ 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. 809
15. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 195
16. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. crecer
17. ^ 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. crecer
18. ^ 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. 529
19. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 651
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 304
21. ^ a b Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 186
22. ^ 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. 331
23. ^ 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. crecer
24. ^ 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. crecer
25. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. crecer