criar

Forms

criar (first-person singular present crío, first-person singular preterite crie, past participle criado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin creō (“to create; to beget”), a verb that in Latin could already mean “to give birth, engender” in Horace and Ovid.^[2][3][4][1] As a popular word it seems to survive only in the three Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula: Portuguese criar, Galician criar and Catalan criar.^[2][5] Italian creare is a learned word, and Old French crier has almost only the learned sense “to create from nothing”.^[2] Asturian has criyar.^[6]

The learned doublet crear, taken from the same Latin verb, is already found in the Middle Ages.^[3][1] The present division between the two forms is very late: applied to God, the popular form still prevails in the Golden Age, and the learned form first won ground in the sense “to appoint to an office”, as when Hernando del Pulgar wrote of creating a cardinal (1486).^[2]

The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Italic *krējā-; its original sense was “to make grow”, still found in Cato, and it belongs with crēscō (“to grow”).^[7] Wiktionary derives it from Proto-Indo-European *ḱreh₁-eh₂yé-ti, from the root *ḱer- (“to grow”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is a charter of 1097 cited from Menéndez Pidal's Orígenes, followed by the Cantar de mio Cid.^[2][3] The DEMel lists a form griare in a charter of San Zoilo de Carrión of 1057.^[8] In the Cid the verb means to bring up and educate another man's son in one's own household: the Cid tells Muño Gustioz en buen ora te crié a ti en la mi cort “in a good hour I brought you up at my court”, and the men raised in this way were his criados.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used criar for God's creation (Berceo), for begetting, for bringing up one's own or another's child, for rearing animals and for growing; the reflexive meant “to grow up” or “to be brought up in another's house”.^[10][11] In Alfonso X's Lapidario a cockerel is reared for eight months.^[12] The participle criado, first “son, pupil” and “vassal brought up in his lord's house” (Cid), came to mean “servant” by 1330.^[3][2]

Covarrubias held that in the strict sense of the scholastic doctors criar is to make something out of nothing, which belongs to God alone; by allusion one says that the Pope cría cardinals, who are therefore called his criaturas.^[13] He also gave the sense “to breed, produce”: a land cría brave men, and Córdoba good horses.^[13] Autoridades has the same senses and adds the nursing of a baby by its mother or wet nurse.^[14] Cuervo describes criar as the popular form, kept for the ordinary senses, and crear as the form of elevated, technical and literary language.^[15]

In the Canary Islands the verb is used of a wound that festers, a sense the TDHLE compares with Portuguese.^[16] In Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay a la que te criaste means “carelessly, any old how”.^[17] The first record from the Americas, of 1515 in Tierra Firme, speaks of islets for rearing pigs.^[18]

Timeline

• 1057 – the form griare in a charter of San Zoilo de Carrión, according to the DEMel.^[8]
• 1097 – a charter, Corominas's first record.^[2][3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses it for bringing up a vassal at court.^[9][2]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar has Moses' mother given the child a criar, to nurse.^[19]
• 1256–1263 – the Siete Partidas define criar as making something from nothing, which belongs to God alone.^[11]
• 1330 – criado in the sense “servant”.^[3]
• 1486 – Hernando del Pulgar has the learned crear cardenal.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses it “to make anew” with Latin creo.^[20]
• 1515 – first record from the Americas.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias distinguishes creation from nothing and breeding.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from crear.^[21]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also pronominal) Of a thing or living being, to produce or give rise to something: El agua estancada cría mosquitos.^[4]
2. (transitive) Of a mother or wet nurse, to nurse and feed a baby at the breast or with a bottle.^[4][22]
3. (transitive, also intransitive) Of an animal, to produce, look after and feed its young; to breed.^[4]
4. (transitive) To breed animals or grow plants: Cría ovejas en la sierra.^[4][22]
5. (transitive) To bring up, educate and guide a child.^[4][1]
6. (transitive) To raise someone to a high dignity.^[4][13]
7. (transitive) To establish or found something for the first time.^[4]
8. (transitive) To age a wine after fermentation with the proper treatment.^[4]
9. (transitive) To give occasion or cause for something.^[4]
10. (religion) Of God, to create from nothing.^[4][13]
11. (pronominal) Of a living being, to grow up and develop: Se crio en un pueblo de pescadores.^[4][1]
12. (Canary Islands, intransitive) Of a wound, to fester.^[16]

Word family

• cría
• criadero
• criado
• criador
• crianza
• criazón
• crío
• criadilla
• malcriado
• recriar

Related words

• crear
• Portuguese criar

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 h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 241
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. criar
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. criar
5. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1035
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. creare
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock
9. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 196
10. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 152
11. ^ 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. 813
12. ^ 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. criar
13. ^ a b c d e Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 531
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 657
15. ^ 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, 590
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. criar
17. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. criar
18. ^ a b 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. crear
19. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
20. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 320
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. 306
22. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. criar