fingir

Forms

fingir (first-person singular present finjo, first-person singular preterite fingí, past participle fingido)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin fingō (“to knead; to shape; to invent”), a learned word.^[2][3][4][1] The inherited outcome of the same Latin verb is heñir “to knead”.^[2][3][5] A Latin charter of León of 1020 already uses fingō for kneading bread.^[2]

The Latin verb also gave Portuguese fingir, Italian fingere, French feindre and Occitan fenher.^[6] The English word feign is of the same origin.^[1]

De Vaan traces fingō to Proto-Italic *fingō (“to knead, form”), a nasal present of the root Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyǵʰ-, whose noun is reflected in words for a wall;^[7][1] Wiktionary glosses the root “to mold” and compares Ancient Greek τεῖχος (teîkhos, “wall”) and English dough.^[7][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is the Gran Conquista de Ultramar (about 1300), but he notes that the word may have been introduced only in the first printed edition; his next records are of about 1440.^[2] The first dated text in the CDH is the Crónica de 1344: que se fingio falsa mente ser profeta “who falsely pretended to be a prophet”.^[8]

Semantic evolution

In the 15th century Alfonso de Palencia and Nebrija use the verb;^[9] Nebrija glosses it with Latin fingo and comminiscor.^[2][9] Covarrubias (1611) explains that the Latin verb meant to shape something out of clay, but that in Spanish it was mostly used for dissembling and making up a lie.^[10] Autoridades defines it as carefully concealing something so that its true nature is not seen, and adds the senses “to imitate” and “to imagine what does not exist”.^[11] The modern dictionaries keep the senses of pretending and of giving an imaginary existence to something.^[4][12]

Timeline

• 1300 – the Gran Conquista de Ultramar, perhaps only in the printed edition.^[2]
• 1344 – se fingio in the Crónica de 1344.^[8][9]
• c. 1440 – Alfonso de la Torre, the first record for the BDELC.^[3][2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: Latin fingo and comminiscor.^[13]
• 1532 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico City.^[14]
• 1611 – Covarrubias: chiefly “to dissemble, to invent a lie”.^[10]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades: to conceal something's true nature.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also pronominal) To pretend, make out that something is so when it is not: Fingió no oírme.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To feign, fake: fingir sorpresa.^[1][12]
3. (transitive, also pronominal) To give an imaginary existence to what has none; to represent something convincingly.^[4][12]

Word family

• fingido
• fingimiento
• fingidor

Related words

• ficción
• ficticio
• heñir
• efigie
• finta
• Latin fingō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 901
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. fingir
4. ^ a b c d 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. fingir
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. fingere
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. fingere
7. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. fingir
9. ^ a b c 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. fingir
10. ^ 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. 848
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 756
12. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. fingir
13. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 354
14. ^ 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. fengir