creer

Forms

creer (first-person singular present creo, first-person singular preterite creí, past participle creído)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish creer, inherited from Latin crēdere (“to believe; to give credence (to someone)”).^[2][3][1] Old Spanish also had the forms creder, crer and creyer, and the old strong preterite crovo “he believed” of the Cantar de mio Cid.^[4][5][6]

The same verb is Portuguese crer, Galician crer, Asturian creyer, Aragonese creyer, Catalan creure, French croire, Italian credere and Romanian crede.^[4][7][1]

In Latin the verb meant “to entrust, lend” as well as “to believe”.^[8][9] Bénaben describes it as an old religious term that took on secular senses, to which Christianity gave back its religious role.^[10] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *ḱred-dʰeh₁- “to place the heart”, hence “to believe”, the compound also behind Old Irish creitid “believes”.^[8] Wiktionary takes the Latin verb from Proto-Italic *krezðō and explains the compound as an oblique form of *ḱḗr (“heart”), the source of cor, with *dʰeh₁- (“to put, place”); it compares Sanskrit श्रद्दधाति (śraddadhāti, “trusts, believes”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) uses it for religious faith, in a prayer: „en ti crovo al ora, por end es salvo de mal” “he believed in you then, and so he is safe from harm”.^[6][11] The Tentative Dictionary also cites the Cid for “to believe (someone)” and “to hold (news) as true”.^[5]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose already has the senses “to hold as true”, “to have religious faith”, “to think, suppose” and “to hold likely”.^[12] Covarrubias in 1611 defined it as assenting to what one does not understand or perceive, the proper act of faith, and quoted the proverb ver y creer “seeing is believing”, which, he said, is really not believing.^[13] The Autoridades put the religious definition first, followed by “to give credit to something” and “to think, judge”, and noted the ⟨y⟩ that the verb takes between its two e's in creyera, creyesse.^[14]

The Academy's dictionary of 1884 recorded the familiar exclamation ¡ya lo creo! “of course!”.^[15] In 1855 Baralt condemned reflexive creerse “to think oneself” as a Gallicism after French se croire;^[16] the DLE and Wiktionary now list the pronominal use as normal.^[3][1]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has the preterite crovo.^[11][2]
• c. 1180 – the Auto de los Reyes Magos: „Por uertad no lo creo ata que io lo ueo” “truly, I don't believe it until I see it”.^[11]
• 1220–1250 – creencia, creyente and acreer “to lend” are first recorded.^[2]
• 1241 – acreedor “creditor”, from acreer.^[2]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses creer and creye “he believed”.^[12]
• 1513 – Nebrija gives Latin credo as its equivalent.^[17]
• 1537 – the first record from the Americas, in Cartagena.^[18]
• 1604 – descreído is first recorded.^[2]
• 1611 – Covarrubias quotes the proverb ver y creer.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. credere” and the phrase ¡ya lo creo!.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To believe: to hold something as true without knowing it directly or having proof of it: No creas todo lo que lees.^[3][1]
2. (transitive) To believe someone, to take them to be telling the truth: Nadie te va a creer.^[3]
3. (transitive) To think, to be of the opinion: Creo que va a llegar tarde.^[3][1]
4. (transitive) To consider likely: No creo que venga hoy.^[3]
5. (transitive) To take someone or something to be in a certain state or place: La creíamos en Sevilla.^[3]
6. (reflexive) To think oneself something: Se cree muy listo.^[3][1]
7. (intransitive) To have religious faith; with en, to believe that someone or something exists: creer en Dios.^[3]
8. (intransitive, with en) To have confidence in someone or something: Su entrenador siempre creyó en él.^[3]

Word family

• creencia
• creíble
• increíble
• creyente
• creído
• descreer
• descreído
• acreer
• acreedor

Related words

• credibilidad
• crédito
• creedor
• credo
• crédulo
• credencial
• Latin crēdō

Usage notes

Ya lo creo is an emphatic “of course”, and no creas or no te creas “don't think so” softens or denies a statement.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. creer
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. creer
4. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. credere
5. ^ 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. 151
6. ^ 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, p. 810
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. credere
8. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. crēdō
10. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. creer
11. ^ 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. creer
12. ^ 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. creer
13. ^ 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. 530
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 654
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 305
16. ^ Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 187
17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 320
18. ^ 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. creer