girar

Forms

girar (first-person singular present giro, first-person singular preterite giré, past participle girado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin gȳrāre (“to turn round in a circle”), from gȳrus (“circle”), which was taken from Ancient Greek γῦρος (gûros, “circle, ring”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} Corominas treats it as a learned word, used in the 15th and 16th centuries mostly by Latinising or regional writers.^[2] The REW instead takes the Spanish and Portuguese verb from Catalan girar, which is recorded from 1250; in 1611 Covarrubias said that the word was not used in Castile but in Catalan.^[6][7][2]

The same Latin verb is Portuguese girar, Galician xirar, Aragonese chirar, Italian girare and French girer.^[6][8][1] The Latin noun was used for the ring in which horses were trained.^[9] Beekes connects the Greek noun with the adjective meaning “round, curved”, perhaps from an Indo-European root meaning “bent”.^[10] Wiktionary gives the root as Proto-Indo-European *gew- (“to curve, bend”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are in the Aragonese works of Juan Fernández de Heredia: in his Gran crónica de España (1376–1391) the Moors are told to girar las espaldas, “turn their backs”, as if fleeing, and in his Orosius Hannibal orders the ship's course to be turned.^[11][12] Corominas's first record, from the middle of the 15th century, is girar la faz “turn the face” in the Aragonese poet Juan de Tapia.^[2] Corominas dates it 1444 in his shorter dictionary.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Until the 17th century the verb was rare, apart from Alfonso de Palencia's vocabulary and writers such as Hernán Núñez and Mena; it reappears in Góngora, and Corominas still found it only moderately used and clearly learned.^[2] Autoridades listed it under the spelling gyrar.^[13]

The business sense, remitting bills of exchange, is in the Academy's dictionary by 1817, beside giro “transfer of funds”, recorded from 1734.^[14][3] The 1884 edition adds the mechanical sense, rotation round an axis.^[15] The modern figurative senses, of a road changing direction and a conversation turning on a subject, are in the DLE.^[4]

Wiktionary gives the Rioplatense slang verb yirar as its doublet.^[1]

Timeline

• 1376–1391 – Juan Fernández de Heredia's Gran crónica de España has girar las espaldas.^[11]
• mid-15th century – girar la faz in Juan de Tapia.^[2]
• 1444 – Corominas's date for the verb.^[3]
• 1499 – a record in Hernán Núñez.^[2]
• 1515 – the first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias says the word is Catalan, not Castilian.^[2]
• 1734 – the first record of giro “transfer of funds”.^[3]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary records the sense “to remit bills of exchange”.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology from Latin gyrare.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To turn or rotate something round a point or an axis: Giró la llave dos veces.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To send money by postal or telegraphic transfer.^[4]
3. (transitive, commerce) To draw or issue bills of exchange, cheques or other orders of payment: Giró un cheque contra su cuenta.^[4]
4. (intransitive) To spin, revolve round an axis or a point.^[4][1]
5. (intransitive) Of a conversation or business: to turn on a given subject.^[4]
6. (intransitive) To turn off, change direction: El camino gira hacia el río.^[4]
7. (intransitive, commerce) To carry on the business operations of a firm.^[4]

Word family

• gira
• girada
• giradiscos
• girador
• girasol
• giratorio

Related words

• giro
• yirar
• Latin gyrus
• Catalan girar

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 h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 150
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. giro
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. girar
5. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3937
7. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 4, 505
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. gyrare
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ 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. girar
12. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. girar
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 51
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 443
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 532
16. ^ 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. girar