dorar

Forms

dorar (first-person singular present doro, first-person singular preterite doré, past participle dorado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin deaurāre (“to gild”).^[2][3][4][1] Corominas notes that the verb is common to all of western Romance.^[2] The same Latin verb is Portuguese dourar, Galician dourar, Catalan daurar, Occitan daurar, French dorer and Italian dorare.^[5][6][7][8]

The Latin verb is a late word for classical inaurō, found in Tertullian, the Theodosian Code and the Vulgate, and in an inscription of AD 162.^[9] It is formed with dē-, here an intensive “completely”, and aurō (“to gild”), a verb made from aurum (“gold”).^[10][1] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *auso- and Proto-Indo-European *h₂é-h₂us-o- (“glow”) for the noun, cognate with Lithuanian áuksas (“gold”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first finite form of the verb is in La fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy): e dorola toda de dentro e de fuera de oro desmerado “and he gilded it all inside and out with pure gold”.^[12][13] The participle is older: the Cantar de mio Cid describes los clavos bien dorados “the well-gilded nails”, and the Tentative Dictionary lists this line under the verb.^[12][14] Corominas's own first dates for the infinitive are later: 1534 in the DCECH and 1495 (Nebrija) in the Breve diccionario.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In Alfonso X's laws the participle is said of harness that knights should not wear gilded.^[15] Covarrubias in 1611 recorded both the literal sense and a figurative one, “to give a thing a good meaning”, with desdorarse “to lose one's good name”.^[16] The Diccionario de Autoridades described the gilder's methods, and added the figurative sense “to cover up the faults of a thing so that it seems good” and the poets' use of the sun that gilds rivers and hills.^[17]

Terreros recorded in 1786 the pastry cook's use, brushing a pie with egg yolk, and the phrase dorar la píldora “to sweeten a bitter pill”.^[18] The cooking sense “to brown lightly” is now the second most common: the Academy has it as a sense of its own, transitive and pronominal.^[4][19] In Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic rice is said to dorar when it begins to ripen.^[20]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – La fazienda de Ultra Mar has the finite form dorola “he gilded it”.^[13][12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin auro and inauro as its equivalents.^[21][3]
• 1534 – Corominas's first record of the infinitive, in a law of the Nueva Recopilación.^[2]
• 1548 – first record from the Americas, in Santo Domingo.^[22]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the figurative sense “to put a good face on a thing”.^[16]
• 1786 – Terreros records the pastry cook's sense and dorar la píldora.^[18]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. deaurare”.^[23]

Meanings

Verb

1. To gild: to cover the surface of something with gold or a similar substance.^[4][1]
2. To give something the colour of gold;^[4][19] (pronominal) to turn golden: El sol de la tarde doraba los trigales.^[4][19]
3. (cooking) To brown food lightly;^[4][1] (pronominal) to turn brown: Se fríe el ajo hasta que se dore.^[4][1]
4. (rare) To gloss over unpleasant acts or news by presenting them pleasantly, as in dorar la píldora.^[4][19]
5. (Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, rural) Of rice: to begin to ripen.^[20]

Word family

• dorado
• dorador
• doradura
• desdorar
• sobredorar
• redorar

Related words

• oro
• áureo
• Latin aurum
• Portuguese dourar
• French dorer

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 303
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. oro
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. dorar
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 2122
6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1239
7. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. daurar
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. dorer
9. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. deauro
10. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 239
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. aurum
12. ^ 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. dorar
13. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. dorar
14. ^ Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 199
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. dorar
16. ^ 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. 691
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 338
18. ^ a b Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 1, 701
19. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. dorar
20. ^ 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. dorar
21. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 338
22. ^ 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. dorar
23. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 370