desmayar

Forms

desmayar (first-person singular present desmayo, first-person singular preterite desmayé, past participle desmayado)^[1] The Poema de Fernán González and the Libro de Alexandre have a participle desmaído or esmaído, secured by the rhyme.^[2] Wiktionary also lists the variant esmayar.^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old French esmaiier (“to trouble, frighten; to lose heart”).^[2][3][4][1] The French verb comes from Vulgar Latin *exmagare (“to deprive of strength”), formed on a Germanic verb, Proto-Germanic *maganą (“to be able, have strength”);^[2][5] Wiktionary puts Frankish *magan in between and takes the Germanic verb from Proto-Indo-European *megʰ-.^[1] Bénaben reports Pierre Guiraud's proposal to connect the Vulgar Latin verb with Latin magus (“sorcerer”) instead.^[6]

Native descendants of the Vulgar Latin verb are Old Occitan esmagar, Old Catalan esmagat (“disheartened”), Old Italian smagare (“to confuse, disturb”) and probably Portuguese esmagar (“to crush, oppress”).^[2] Corominas concludes that the word once covered the whole Peninsula until the Gallicism replaced it.^[2] The French word was also borrowed as Catalan desmaiar and Portuguese desmaiar;^[2] Cunha explains the Portuguese verb as esmaiar with a change of prefix.^[7] In French the verb fell out of use about 1600, but it survives in the noun French émoi and in the borrowing dismay.^[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record is in Almerich's Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy): when the Jordan dried up for the Israelites, the people ovieron grant pavor e desmayáronse sos coraçones, “were greatly afraid and their hearts failed them”.^[8] The Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215), Corominas's first record, has muy desmayada of the saint turned back from the church.^[2][8]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages the verb was intransitive and meant to lose heart, to fail in spirit, as in French; the sense “to faint, lose consciousness” is, for Corominas, a later development that appears in the Golden Age, with Fray Luis de León, Mariana and Cervantes.^[2] Alfonso X's Lapidario already uses desmayado of a man stunned and staring, as if frozen.^[9] The noun desmayo is recorded from about 1330.^[3]

The Diccionario de Autoridades (1732) gives the intransitive “to lose courage” and the transitive “to dishearten someone”; the pronominal desmayarse “to lose consciousness” is in the Academy's edition of 1843 but not in that of 1817.^[10][11][12] In Ecuador the verb is said of a colour that fades.^[4] In literary use it is said of things that hang limp, like a willow over a river, and the noun desmayo names the weeping willow in Asturias.^[13][2]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – La fazienda de Ultra Mar has desmayáronse sos coraçones.^[8]
• c. 1215 – the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca, Corominas's first record.^[2][14]
• c. 1330 – the first record of the noun desmayo.^[3]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary glosses animo linqui and exanimo with desmaiar.^[15]
• 1532 – the first records from the Americas, in Mexico.^[16]
• 1591 – Percyvall translates it “to dismay, to swoon”.^[17]
• 1732 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines the intransitive and the transitive uses.^[11]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary has the pronominal sense “to lose consciousness”.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To make someone faint.^[4][1]
2. (intransitive) To lose heart or courage, to falter: No hay que desmayar ante el primer fracaso.^[4][13]
3. (Ecuador, intransitive) Of a colour: to fade.^[4]
4. (pronominal) To faint, to lose consciousness.^[4][1]
5. (literary, pronominal) Of a thing: to hang limp.^[13]

Word family

• desmayo

Related words

• French émoi
• Portuguese desmaiar

Usage notes

Spanish desmayar is a false friend of English dismay: it means “to faint” or “to lose heart”, not “to alarm”.^[1]

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 Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 468
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. desmayar
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. desmayar
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3022
6. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. desmayar
7. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1151
8. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. desmayar
9. ^ 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. desmayar
10. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 309
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 195
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 251
13. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. desmayar
14. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. desmayar
15. ^ 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. desmayar
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. desmayar
17. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 115