estornudar

Forms

estornudar (first-person singular present estornudo, first-person singular preterite estornudé, past participle estornudado)^[1] The older form esternudar is found in the 15th and 16th centuries and survives in Mexico;^[2][3] esternudar is also Murcian, Salamancan and Extremaduran, beside Extremaduran estarnudar.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sternūtō (“to sneeze repeatedly”), the frequentative of sternuō (“to sneeze”).^{[2][4][5][1][6]} The noun estornudo is recorded earlier, in 1251, and continues the Late Latin sternūtus (“sneeze”), first found in a translation of Oribasius made at Ravenna in the early 6th century.^[2]

Corominas takes esternudar to be the original Spanish form, and the standard form to have the same assimilation of the vowel to the following /u/ that occurs in Occitan and Campidanese Sardinian.^[2] García de Diego instead credits the /o/ to the influence of toser.^[3] The other Romance languages mostly keep the Latin stem: Catalan esternudar, French éternuer and Old Portuguese esternudar, which Portuguese espirrar has replaced; Italian starnutare and Romanian strănuta alter it in other ways.^[2][7]

De Vaan reconstructs *(p)ster-nu- and Proto-Indo-European *(p)st-(e)r-nu- (“to sneeze”), with cognates in Welsh, Greek and Armenian; he notes that onomatopoeic deformation may have affected all of them.^[8] Gómez de Silva and Bénaben also call the root imitative.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Moamín (1250, in a copy of the second half of the 13th century), among the signs of a dry cold in hawks: their nostrils are blocked and dry e estornudan mucho “and they sneeze a lot”.^[11][12] The sense was the same as today.^[12] Corominas dates the verb only from Alfonso de Palencia in 1490.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The verb has kept its physical sense throughout.^[5] Its history is mostly that of the customs around sneezing: in 1385 Fernández de Heredia mentions making the sign of the cross when someone sneezes or yawns, and in 1572 a Mexican source reports that the native people avoided saying Dios me ayude when someone sneezed.^[11][13] Covarrubias in 1611 explained the custom of uncovering one's head when someone sneezes and recalled a plague in Rome in which people died while sneezing.^[14]

The Autoridades of 1732 recorded the proverb cada uno estornuda como Dios le ayuda, meaning that each person reaches their goal in their own way, used to turn away unwanted advice.^[15] Domínguez in 1846 added an ironic figurative use: to show that someone is present who has not said a word.^[16] In El Salvador the verb also means to pay up or contribute money.^[17]

Timeline

• 1250 – the Moamín describes hawks that estornudan mucho.^[11][12]
• 1251 – the noun estornudo appears in the Calila e Dimna.^[2][4]
• 1386 – López de Ayala's book of falconry uses the verb.^[11]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia, Corominas's first record.^[2][4]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin sternuo and sternuto.^[18][19]
• 1567 – the first record from the Americas, in Nueva Galicia.^[13]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Latin sternuo and discusses the customs of sneezing.^[14]
• 1732 – the Autoridades records the proverb cada uno estornuda como Dios le ayuda.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To sneeze: to expel air from the lungs suddenly and noisily through the nose and mouth, in an involuntary reaction to an irritation of the nasal mucosa: El polvo del desván le hizo estornudar tres veces.^[5][20][1]
2. (El Salvador, transitive) To pay money or make a contribution.^[17]

Word family

• estornudo

Related words

• Latin sternuō
• Catalan esternudar
• French éternuer

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 795
3. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. sternutare
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. estornudar
5. ^ 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. estornudar
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. estornudar
10. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. estornudar
11. ^ 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. estornudar
12. ^ a b c 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. estornudar
13. ^ a b 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. estarnudar
14. ^ 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. 810
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 643
16. ^ 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. 767
17. ^ 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. estornudar
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 351
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. estornudar
20. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. estornudar