cuidar

Forms

cuidar (first-person singular present cuido, first-person singular preterite cuidé, past participle cuidado)^[1] Old Spanish wrote it coidar, coydar, cuidar, cuydar, cudar, coedar, cuedar and cueidar.^[2][3] Góngora, Vélez de Guevara and Calderón still stressed cúida; the stress is kept in Chile, and the forms cudiar and cuidiar are found in popular speech.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cuidar (“to think”), inherited from Latin cōgitō (“to think”).^[3][5][6][1] Corominas traces the sound changes as /koyedár/ > /koydár/ > /kuydár/ > /kujdár/: the fricative /y/ closed the syllable and raised /o/ to /u/, as in cuñado.^[3] The diphthong ⟨ui⟩ was unusual, and Old Spanish also had cueda, cueida and cuda.^[3] The learned doublet is cogitar.^[3][1]

The same verb is Portuguese cuidar, Galician coidar, Catalan cuidar, Occitan coidar, Old French cuidier and Romanian cugeta.^[7][1] In Catalan, as in Spanish, the old sense was “to think”;^[8][9] Coromines doubts that the sense “to take care of” owes much to Castilian, while the DCVB takes it as a Castilianism.^[8][9]

The Latin verb is formed from con- and agitō (“to drive, stir, consider”), a frequentative of agō (“to drive, do”).^[10][1][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has it in the sense “to intend, think to”: Mio Cid don Rodrigo Alcocer cueda ganar “my Cid don Rodrigo means to take Alcocer”.^[12][2] The Auto de los Reyes Magos (c. 1180) has Cudo que uerdad es “I think it is true”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages cuidar always meant “to think, judge, believe”, and it kept this sense in Golden Age verse and in some archaising prose.^[3][13] For Ercilla and Fray Luis de León it already had the modern meaning; the Breve diccionario dates that sense to the 16th century.^[3][5] Corominas explains the change by the noun cuidado, which already meant “concern, solicitude” in the Cid, and by descuidar;^[3] pensar had gone the same way, since pensar de algo meant “to look after” in Old Spanish.^[3]

Covarrubias in 1611 glossed it “to think, take heed” and thought it French, an old term.^[14] Autoridades gave the modern sense first, marked “to judge, reason” as antiquated, and traced the verb to Latin cūrō (“to care for”).^[15] The Academy kept curare as the etymon in 1884 and 1899; the current dictionary derives it from coidar and cogitāre.^[16][17][6] In Costa Rica it is a rural word for feeding an animal, and in Venezuela for running a property, especially a cattle ranch.^[18]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has cueda “intends” (in a 14th-century copy).^[12][5]
• c. 1180 – the Auto de los Reyes Magos has cudo “I think”.^[12]
• 1220–1250 – descuidar is first recorded.^[5]
• 1251 – the adjective cuidoso appears in the Calila e Dimna.^[3]
• 16th century – the modern sense “to look after” is established.^[5][3]
• 1584 – first record from the Americas, in Guatemala City.^[19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias glosses it “to think, take heed”.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades marks the sense “to judge” as antiquated.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy derives it from Latin curare.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To take care and pay attention in doing something: Cuida mucho la letra de sus cartas.^[6][1]
2. (transitive, also intransitive with de) To look after, watch over, keep in good condition: cuidar a una abuela, cuidar de la huerta.^[6][1][20]
3. (archaic) To think, reason.^[6][3]
4. (reflexive) To look after one's health.^[6][1]
5. (reflexive, with de) To be wary of, mind: No se cuida de las críticas.^[6][1]
6. (Costa Rica, rural) To feed an animal.^[18][1]

Word family

• cuidador
• descuidar
• cuidado
• cuidadoso
• descuido
• cuidacoches

Related words

• cuidadosamente
• cogitar
• cuita
• Latin cōgitō
• Portuguese cuidar

Usage notes

The Academy's dictionaries of 1817 to 1869 list the proverb cuida bien lo que haces, no te fíes de rapaces “watch what you do, don't trust youngsters”, said of trusting inexperienced people with important matters.^[21][22]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. 121
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 284
4. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. cuidar
5. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuidar
6. ^ a b c d e f g 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. cuidar
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 2, 1089
9. ^ a b Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. cuidar
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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. cuidar
12. ^ 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. cuidar
13. ^ 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. 834
14. ^ 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. 554
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 693
16. ^ 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. 320
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 296
18. ^ 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. cuidar
19. ^ 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. cuidar
20. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cuidar
21. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 264
22. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 231