dar

Forms

dar (first-person singular present doy, first-person singular preterite di, past participle dado)^[1] Old Spanish said do for “I give”, and Leonese and Galician-Portuguese texts dou or older dau, from Vulgar Latin dao.^[2] Autoridades notes that rustic speakers still said dó in its time.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish dar, inherited from Latin dare (“to give”).^[2][4][5][1] Corominas doubts that the modern first person ⟨doy⟩ grew out of the old diphthong of dou.^[2] He suggests rather that the adverb y (“there”) was fused with the verb, as in ⟨voy⟩, ⟨soy⟩ and ⟨estoy⟩, starting from phrases meaning “I give [it] there, to that monastery”.^[2]

The same verb is Portuguese dar, Galician dar, Asturian dar, Catalan dar, Occitan dar, Italian dare and Romanian da.^[6][1] Old French lacked it: there it merged with dōnō (“to give as a present”).^[6]

The Latin verb comes from Proto-Italic *didō, from Proto-Indo-European *deh₃- (“to give”).^[1] The reduplication was lost in the Latin present but kept in the perfect ⟨dedī⟩.^[1][7] The same root gave Ancient Greek δίδωμι (dídōmi).^[8][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the verb from the earliest texts of the language, the Cantar de mio Cid among them.^[2][4] The king has ordered that no one give the hero shelter: que a mio Cid Ruy Díaz que nadi no·l' diessen posada “that no one should give lodging to my Cid Ruy Díaz”.^[9] The earliest hits in the CDH are Latin charters, in which the word is die or dedit.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish already had most of the modern range: “to give as a gift”, “to hand over”, “to grant”, “to communicate”, “to declare”, “to send”, “to value” and “to strike”, often with a or en.^[10] Covarrubias in 1611 notes that the verb is used in good and bad senses, for generosity and for beating, and records the proverb dádivas quebrantan peñas “gifts break rocks”.^[11] Autoridades lists dar for “to beat” and for “to apply” a remedy or advice.^[3] Cuervo's dictionary of construction gives it more than thirty pages.^[2][12]

Today the verb is one of the most used in the language, with dozens of senses and set phrases: dar con “to find”, dar a “to face onto”, darse “to happen”.^[5][1] In Bolivia, Chile and the Río de la Plata dar un examen means “to sit an exam”.^[13]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses the verb for giving, handing over and striking.^[4][10]
• 1201 – earliest text with the verb in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[14]
• 1250–1300 – the Moamín uses it for giving food and medicine to hawks.^[15]
• 1525 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City: vos do poder conplido “I give you full power”.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records dádivas quebrantan peñas.^[11]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades notes the irregular forms doy, di, dé and the old dó.^[3]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin dare.^[17]

Meanings

Verb

1. To give, to make a present of something.^[5][1]
2. To hand over, deliver.^[5][1]
3. To grant, confer: dar permiso; to appoint someone to a post.^[5]
4. To consider, regard as: Doy el asunto por cerrado.^[5][1]
5. Of land or a plant, to yield fruit; to produce income: Este manzano da muchas manzanas.^[5][1]
6. To show a film or a play; to give a class or a talk.^[5][1]
7. To strike, hit: dar un golpe;^[1] (reflexive) to bump into: Me di con la puerta.^[5][1]
8. To cause a feeling or state: dar miedo, dar sueño.^[5][1]
9. Of a clock, to strike the hour: Ya han dado las nueve.^[5]
10. (with con) To find, come upon.^[5][1]
11. (with a) To face, look onto: La ventana da al jardín.^[5]
12. (reflexive) To happen, occur; of plants, to grow well.^[5][1]
13. (reflexive) To devote oneself to something; to give oneself up to a vice.^[5]
14. (Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay) To sit an exam.^[13]

Word family

• dador
• dable
• daca
• desdar

Related words

• dádiva
• dato
• data
• dativo
• dosis
• donar
• Latin dō
• Portuguese dar

Usage notes

Dar is irregular: present doy, preterite di, dio, subjunctive dé.^[1][3] Fixed expressions include da igual and tanto da “it makes no difference”.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 425
3. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 7
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. dar
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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. dar
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
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. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ 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. dar
10. ^ 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. 163
11. ^ 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. 634
12. ^ 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, 726
13. ^ 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. dar
14. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
15. ^ 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. dar
16. ^ 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. dar
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 336