curar

Forms

curar (first-person singular present curo, first-person singular preterite curé, past participle curado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin cūrō (“to take care of, look after”).^[2][3][4][1] The oldest Old Spanish form is curiar, in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[2][3] The present form is normal from the 14th century.^[2][3]

The origin of the ⟨i⟩ of the old form is unsure.^[2] Corominas rejects a purely phonetic development and a borrowing from an eastern French dialect, and, following Baist, attributes it to the influence of Latin incūria (“neglect”), perhaps helped by cūriōsus; he finds the starting point in a noun curia (“care”), recorded in a Sigüenza document of 1239 and in the Vida de Santa María Egipciaca.^[2] García de Diego suggests instead the influence of the synonym cudiar, a metathesis of cuidar.^[5]

The same Latin verb is Portuguese curar, Catalan curar, Italian curare and Asturian curiar (“to look after”);^[5][1] Asturian also has corar (“to gut”), like French curer.^[5][1]

The Latin verb is derived from cūra (“care, anxiety”); inscriptions of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC still write the stem ⟨coira-⟩ and ⟨coera-⟩.^[6] The noun goes back to *kʷoizā and Proto-Indo-European *kʷeys- (“to heed”), with cognates in Paelignian and Umbrian.^[6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has the old form in Jimena's prayer, que Dios le curie de mal, “may God keep him from harm”: the sense is “to look after, protect”.^[7][2]

Semantic evolution

The old sense “to take care of, pay heed to” lasted a long time: Corominas quotes no curé de lo saber, “I didn't care to know it”, from the Lazarillo of 1554.^[2] A letter from Mexico of 1529 says no curéys della, “don't trouble about it”.^[8] Covarrubias in 1611 recorded both senses, treating the sick and no curar “to take no notice”, and the Diccionario de Autoridades (1726) put the medical sense first, adding that “to care for” had been much used in old times.^[9][10] Cuervo documents the use for grooming and tending horses in the 16th and 17th centuries.^[11]

The medical sense is already in the Calila e Dimna of 1251, where the king sends for physicians to cure his daughter.^[12] From it came technical senses of treating materials: in the Canary Islands from 1506 curar meant tending the sugar-cane fields, and the Academy's 1884 edition gives the curing of meat and fish with salt or smoke and the dressing of hides.^[13][14] In the Americas it also means preparing tobacco leaves, seasoning clay or wooden vessels, and, in the pronominal, getting drunk (Bolivia, Chile, Argentina).^[15][1]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – curiar “to protect” in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[7][2]
• 1239 – the noun curia “care” in a Sigüenza document, the form Corominas takes as the source of the i.^[2]
• 1251 – the Calila e Dimna uses curar of physicians healing the sick.^[12]
• 1342–1350 – the Libro de la montería of Alfonso XI speaks of curing dogs' wounds.^[12]
• 1506 – curar the sugar-cane fields in the Canary Islands.^[13]
• 1513 – Nebrija glosses curar as “to take care”, Latin curo.^[16]
• 1529 – the first record in the Americas, in a letter from Mexico City.^[8]
• 1554 – the Lazarillo de Tormes still uses the sense “to care to do”.^[2]
• 1726 – the Diccionario de Autoridades puts the medical sense first.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy adds curing meat and fish and dressing hides.^[14]

Meanings

Verb

1. To cure or heal a sick or injured person or part of the body: El médico le curó el brazo roto.^[4][1]
2. To make an illness, injury or wound go away.^[4]
3. To treat a patient, or to dress a wound.^[4][1]
4. To relieve someone's emotional suffering; to remedy an evil.^[4][1]
5. To preserve meat or fish with salt, cold or smoke so that it keeps.^[4][1]
6. To tan (curtir) and prepare a hide; to season timber.^[4][1]
7. (Cuba, Venezuela) To process tobacco leaves.^[4][15]
8. (rare) To bleach thread or linen.^[4][1]
9. (intransitive, also pronominal) Of a sick person or a wound: to get better, recover.^[4]
10. (intransitive, also pronominal) To take care of something;^[4][1] (archaic) to heed.^[4][1]
11. (pronominal, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina) To get drunk.^[15][1]

Word family

• curable
• curación
• curadillo
• curado
• curador
• curaduría
• curalotodo
• curandero
• curativo
• incurable

Related words

• cura
• curioso
• incuria
• procurar
• Latin cūra
• Portuguese curar

Usage notes

The archaic construction curar de “to take care of, pay attention to” survives in the negative no curar de “not to bother about”.^[9][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 295
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cura
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. curar
5. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. curare
6. ^ 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, p. s.v. cūra
7. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. curar
8. ^ 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. curar
9. ^ 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. 557
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 706
11. ^ 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, 699
12. ^ 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. 840
13. ^ 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. curar
14. ^ 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. 323
15. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. curar
16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 322