desear

Forms

desear (first-person singular present deseo, first-person singular preterite deseé, past participle deseado)^[1] Old Spanish wrote the verb mostly with a single ⟨s⟩ (desear, deseo), but dessear and desseo also occur, in Nebrija and once in the Cid manuscript; the Celestina has both spellings in equal measure.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is formed from Spanish deseo (“desire”) with the verb ending -ar, as the DLE, the BDELC and Wiktionary state.^[4][5][1] The verb is recorded earlier than the noun: the verb already in the Cid, the noun first in Berceo.^[2][5] deseo continues *dēsidium (“erotic desire”), a neuter beside the classical feminine Latin dēsidia (“idleness, sloth”), which already in Antiquity had come to mean “debauchery, voluptuousness”, following the moral commonplace that idleness breeds lust.^[2][5] The neuter form, meaning “idleness”, appears in several medieval texts, and the masculine dēsideus occurs with the sense “lust” in a 10th-century glossary.^[2]

The Ibero-Romance and Occitan forms point to the same base: Portuguese desejar, Galician desexar, Catalan desitjar and the nouns desejo and desig.^[2][6] They differ from French désirer and Italian desiderare, which continue dēsīderō (“to long for, miss”).^[7][8] Wiktionary suggests a Romance verb *dēsidiāre, perhaps a crossing of the Latin verb with invidiāre (“to envy”);^[1] Corominas and Pascual considered such a crossing and rejected it, because the stressed vowel and the final -o of the Spanish noun do not match those of invidia.^[2] Older and some current dictionaries derive the verb directly from the Latin verb: the Academy did so from 1884, and Vox still calls it a popular word from Vulgar Latin.^[9][10]

According to the DCECH, the Spanish verb took over from its Latin synonym the sense “to miss”.^[2] That Latin verb is formed from dē- and a stem linked with sīdus (“star, heavenly body”), as in cōnsīderō; de Vaan cites Rix's view that it first meant “to come off a goal”.^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy), where the Cid's sons-in-law, so eager for battle, desean Carrión “long for Carrión”, that is, wish they were home, and where the Cid says yo desseo lides “I long for battles”.^[12][13][2] The first record in a text without a later copy is Herman the German's translation of the Psalter (c. 1240–1272): David, in the land of the Jordan, deseando uenir to the house of God.^[12]

Semantic evolution

From the start the verb meant “to long for, want”, with a person, a thing or an infinitive as its object;^[14] Berceo writes yo la tu faz deseo “I long for your face”.^[14][4] Alfonso X's prose already has its two main senses, wishing to possess something and wishing that something happen.^[15] The sense “to miss someone absent or dead”, taken from Latin, appears in the Crónica de 1344 and still in Mariana.^[2]

The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as craving something one does not possess and added the sense “to seek, try to achieve”.^[16] Cuervo documents the classical constructions with a noun, an infinitive and a clause, from Saint Teresa, Fray Luis de Granada and Cervantes.^[17] The DLE now also gives “to feel sexual desire for someone”, and Moliner the common use with a personal object for what one wishes another (le deseo un buen viaje).^[4][18]

Old proverbial phrases with the verb are me veo y me deseo “I can hardly manage”, still current in Morocco and in the Portuguese of Trás-os-Montes; today it is vérselas y deseárselas.^[2][1]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has desean Carrión and yo desseo lides.^[12][13]
• c. 1230 – Berceo uses it in the Vida de San Millán.^[12][14]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España has mucho dessee yo la paz “I much desired peace”.^[15]
• 1344 – the Crónica de 1344 uses it for a father missing his dead sons.^[2]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary glosses Latin desidero as dessear.^[19]
• 1521 – the first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records deseado, the epithet of King Sancho, and deseoso.^[21]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from Latin desiderare.^[9]
• 1936 – indeseable enters the Academy's dictionary, modelled on English undesirable.^[5][2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To long for or desire the knowledge, possession or enjoyment of something: Desea una casa junto al mar.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To wish that something will happen or will stop happening: Deseamos que mejore pronto.^[4][18]
3. (transitive) To wish something good for another person: Te deseo mucha suerte en el examen.^[18][10]
4. (transitive) To feel sexual desire for someone.^[4][18]

Word family

• deseable
• indeseable
• deseado

Related words

• deseo
• deseoso
• Latin dēsidia
• Portuguese desejar

Usage notes

Dejar mucho (o bastante) que desear means “to be poor, deficient”;^[18][1] vérselas y deseárselas means “to have great difficulty”.^[18][1] Indeseable imitates English undesirable, which spread in 1911 after a famous expulsion.^[2]

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 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, 460
3. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 179
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. desear
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. deseo
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2212
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2593
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. désirer
9. ^ 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. 362
10. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. desear
11. ^ 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. sīdus
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. desear
13. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. 163
14. ^ a b c Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 292
15. ^ 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. desear
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 150
17. ^ 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, 1042
18. ^ a b c d e f Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. desear
19. ^ 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. desear
20. ^ 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. desear
21. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 654