disturbar

Forms

disturbar (first-person singular present disturbo, first-person singular preterite disturbé, past participle disturbado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin disturbō (“to drive asunder, throw into disorder”), a learned borrowing.^[2][3][1] The Latin verb combines dis- and turbō (“to agitate, disturb”).^[4][1]

The same Latin verb was inherited as Old Spanish destorvar, recorded about 1250, which became estorbar (1495) with a change of prefix.^[5][6][7] Wiktionary therefore calls the learned verb a possible doublet of the inherited one.^[1] The older form lived on in old Aragonese and Leonese texts as destorbar.^[8] Other descendants are Old French destorber, Occitan destorbar, Catalan destorbar and Old Galician-Portuguese destorvar.^[7] Cunha derives Portuguese estorvar from Latin exturbō instead.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's earliest hit, in Alfonso de Palencia's Universal vocabulario of 1490, is the Latin verb in a list of Latin headwords, not the Spanish one.^[10] The first Spanish record is in Fernando de Herrera's Comentarios a Garcilaso (1580), where rhyme disturba muchas y hermosas sentencias “spoils many fine thoughts” that cannot then be told plainly.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The verb has stayed rare and literary: the CDH has it in only 20 documents.^[10] Percyvall glossed it to disturbe in 1591.^[11] Autoridades (1732) defined it as to interrupt or perturb, to turn someone away from what he was intent on, with a line of Góngora.^[12] From 1817 the Academy has defined it as to perturb, to cause a disturbio.^[13][14][2] The 1884 edition was the first to give the Latin etymon.^[14] Vox also gives the sense of hindering something or altering its state.^[15]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – the inherited form destorvar is recorded.^[5]
• 1495 – estorbar replaces it.^[5]
• 1580 – Fernando de Herrera uses disturbar in his Comentarios a Garcilaso.^[10]
• 1591 – Percyvall's dictionary glosses it in English.^[11]
• 1732 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records it, from the Latin verb.^[12]
• 1835 – the Duque de Rivas uses it in Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology.^[14]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To disturb, perturb; to throw into disorder: Los gritos disturbaron la calma de la plaza.^[2][3][1]
2. (transitive) To hinder or disrupt something, or alter its state.^[15][1]

Related words

• disturbio
• estorbar
• turbar
• perturbar
• Latin disturbō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. disturbar
3. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. disturbar
4. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. turbar
6. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 229
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2696
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. disturbare
9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1459
10. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. disturbar
11. ^ a b Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 121
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, s.v. disturbar
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 331
14. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 394
15. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. disturbar