embarazar

Forms

embarazar (first-person singular present embarazo, first-person singular preterite embaracé, past participle embarazado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Galician-Portuguese embaraçar (“to entangle, hinder”) or Old Leonese embaraçar, as Corominas and the Academy explain it.^[2][3][4][1] The verb is formed on baraça (“cord, noose”), also baraço, a word found only in Galician-Portuguese and the westernmost Leonese.^[2] It is recorded in Portuguese charters from 1114–1128 for a snare used in hunting.^[2][5][6] The old voiceless ⟨ç⟩ of ⟨embaraçar⟩ confirms the western origin, for the Castilian suffix from Latin -āceus had a voiced sound.^[2] The first sense was “to tangle, to bind”.^[2]

The origin of this noun is disputed.^[2][1] Sousa and Eguílaz took it from Arabic مَرَسَة (marasa, “rope”), and Wiktionary, Cunha, Machado and Houaiss follow them.^[2][1][7][5] Corominas rejects this, because nothing would explain the change of /m/ to /b/ in such a word.^[2] He thinks a pre-Roman origin likely, perhaps Celtic: following Brüch, a derivative of Proto-Celtic *barros, compare Old Irish barr (“crest, tuft”), which the DLE also cites.^[2][4] The single /r/ against Celtic /rr/ is a difficulty, which he does not think decisive; the Minho dialect word barago, a cord made of the hair of animals' tails, may preserve the first sense.^[2]

Diez, Cuervo and García de Diego derived the verb from barra.^[2][8] Corominas answers that a confusion of /rr/ with /r/ is possible only in French, and that French embarrasser and Italian imbarazzare were themselves taken from the Iberian Peninsula in the 16th century.^[2][9] English embarrass comes from the French verb.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest hit in the CDH that is not a later copy is Pero López de Ayala's book on falconry (1386), on a falcon that is flown on a line: „encuentranse con ella y enbaraçanla: muy pocas vezes la matan” “they run into it and hinder it; very seldom do they kill it”.^[10] Corominas, who found the verb in no text before the mid-15th century, dates it from about 1460, in the Cancionero de Stúñiga and the chronicle of Álvaro de Luna.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija renders embaraçar by Latin impedio and implico, and for centuries the Academy defined the verb only as “to hinder or delay”.^[11][12][13] Autoridades thought it was formed from embrazar, since one who is hindered has his arms tied, as it were.^[14] The Academy's 1884 edition derived it from embargar.^[15]

Domínguez (1846–1847) records poner embarazada “to make pregnant” as the usual phrase, and the DLE now gives “to make a woman pregnant” and, in the reflexive, “to become pregnant”.^[16][4] Bénaben sees pregnancy here as a hindrance, a physical burden on the body.^[17] Moliner adds the sense “to make someone feel awkward”, close to that of French embarrasser.^[18] In the United States embarazar “to embarrass” is an anglicism of popular speech, and in Mexico the verb is used for stuffing ballot boxes with false votes.^[19][20]

Timeline

• 1114–1128 – baraza “snare” in the charter of Ferreira de Aves, Portugal.^[5][2]
• c. 1255 – the CDH dates a hit in the Crónica de Sahagún to about 1255, which Corominas's dating does not support.^[10][2]
• 1386 – López de Ayala's Libro de la caza de las aves.^[10]
• before 1413 – Catalan embarassar in Pere Marc.^[2]
• c. 1460 – Corominas's first records, with the noun embarazo.^[2][3]
• 1495 – embarazado and desembarazar.^[3]
• 1528 – first record from the Americas, in Santa Marta.^[21]
• 1570–1571 – French embarrasser, borrowed from Spanish.^[9]
• 1846–1847 – Domínguez records poner embarazada.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To hinder, obstruct or delay: La nieve embarazaba el avance de la columna.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To make a woman pregnant.^[4][1]
3. (reflexive) Of a woman, to become pregnant: Se embarazó a los treinta años.^[4][1]
4. (reflexive) To be hampered by an obstacle.^[4]
5. (transitive) To make someone feel awkward;^[18][22] (reflexive) to become flustered.^[18][22]
6. (United States, colloquial) To embarrass, to shame.^[19]
7. (Mexico) To stuff a ballot box with false votes.^[20]

Word family

• embarazado
• embarazo
• desembarazar
• embarazoso
• desembarazo

Related words

• Portuguese embaraçar
• Portuguese baraço
• French embarrasser
• Italian imbarazzare
• English embarrass

Usage notes

The participle embarazada means “pregnant”, the reflexive sense of the verb.^[4] For “to embarrass” general Spanish uses avergonzar, which Moreno-Fernández gives as the alternative to the anglicism.^[19]

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 n o p q Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 555
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. embarazar
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. embarazar
5. ^ a b c Machado, José Pedro (1987), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., 5 vols., Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, p. 1, 383
6. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. baraço
7. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 471
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 938
9. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. embarrasser
10. ^ 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. embarazar
11. ^ 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. embarazar
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 344
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 298
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 380
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 412
16. ^ a b Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 667
17. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. embarazar
18. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. embarazar
19. ^ a b c Moreno-Fernández, Francisco (2018), Diccionario de anglicismos del español estadounidense (Informes del Observatorio 037-01/2018SP), Cambridge, Mass.: Instituto Cervantes at Harvard University, p. 55
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. embarazar
21. ^ 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. ambarazar
22. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. embarazar