flotar

Forms

flotar (first-person singular present floto, first-person singular preterite floté, past participle flotado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French flotter (“to float”).^[2][3][4][1] Corominas dates the French verb from about 1100 and relates it to the Germanic family of flota, which came from French flotte and ultimately from Old Norse floti (“fleet; raft”).^[2][3] He finds Bruch's and Meyer-Lübke's Frankish *flotan very risky; following Wartburg, who starts from Middle Dutch vlot and vloten, he suggests that only the noun flot (“wave”) was inherited from Frankish and that the verb was formed from it in Romance, or blended with Latin fluctuō (“to move in waves”).^[2][3] Wiktionary instead takes the French verb straight from Frankish *flotōn (“to float, swim”), from Proto-Germanic *flutōną.^[1]

The older view derived the Spanish verb directly from the Latin verb: Covarrubias did so for the verb meaning “to rub”.^[5] The Academy's dictionary derived it from fluctuar in 1884.^[6] García de Diego still prefers that source.^[7] Corominas holds that the difficulties of a Latin source are insuperable.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record of flotar is from 1525, then in Diego García de Palacio's Instrucción náutica (1587); the noun flote is earlier, from 1478.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The verb was slow to settle: Covarrubias (1611) and Autoridades (1732) give only a homograph meaning “to rub”, and Corominas notes that the sense “to float” is still missing in Autoridades.^[5][8][2] Terreros records “to be carried on the water” with French flotter beside it, and the Academy added it in 1817 as keeping afloat on the water without swimming.^[9][10] In 1869 the Academy added waving in the air, as hair or flags do.^[11] In Chile in 1875 Zorobabel Rodríguez still condemned flotar for ondear as a Gallicism.^[12] Today the verb also covers floating in a gas, and anything intangible that hangs in the air and affects the mood.^[4][13]

Timeline

• 1525 – the first record of flotar.^[2][3]
• 1587 – García de Palacio's Instrucción náutica.^[2]
• 1786–1793 – Terreros has flotar “to be carried on the water”.^[9]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary first has the sense “to float”.^[10]
• 1869 – the Academy adds “to wave in the air”.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) Of a body, to stay on the surface of a liquid; to float: La botella flotaba cerca de la orilla.^[4][1]
2. (intransitive) Of a body, to be held in suspension in a liquid or a gas.^[4]
3. (intransitive) To wave (ondear), to move in waves: Su pañuelo flotaba con la brisa.^[4][13]
4. (intransitive) Of something intangible, to be in the air, affecting people's mood: Una sensación de alivio flotaba en la sala.^[4]

Word family

• flotación
• flotador
• flotable
• flotante

Related words

• flota
• flote
• fluctuar
• French flotter

Usage notes

An old homograph flotar “to rub” (a variant of frotar, now obsolete in the dictionaries) was the only sense in Covarrubias and Autoridades; it is recorded from Santo Domingo in 1551 and Mexico in 1575, and Santamaría called it a common vulgarism there.^{[4][8][14][15][16]}

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 920
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. flota
4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. flotar
5. ^ 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. 857
6. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 501
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2834
8. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 770
9. ^ 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. 2, 173
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 420
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 364
12. ^ Rodríguez, Zorobabel (1875), Diccionario de chilenismos, Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de El Independiente, p. 1
13. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. flotar
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. flotar
15. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 648
16. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 2925