hallar

Forms

hallar (first-person singular present hallo, first-person singular preterite hallé, past participle hallado)^[1] Old Spanish wrote fallar throughout the Middle Ages (falar in the Auto de los Reyes Magos); hallar appears once in Berceo, and allar in the aljamiado Poema de Yúçuf and old Leonese texts.^[2][3] Corominas holds that the medieval fallar was usually pronounced with an aspirated /h/.^[2] In New Mexico and southern Colorado the verb is pronounced with /x/ and written jallar.^[4][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish fallar, inherited from Latin afflō (“to blow or breathe upon”).^[2][5][6][1] That verb is formed from Latin ad- + flō (“to blow”).^[1][7] De Vaan reconstructs a root Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₁- (“to blow”) for flō, with a question mark.^[8]

The word is shared with Portuguese achar, Romanian afla, Romansh anflar and southern Italian forms such as Sicilian and Calabrian asciari; a Dalmatian derivative shows that the verb existed there too.^[2][9] Asturian afayar “to find; to be at ease” is the same verb.^[10][2]

The Spanish /h/ (written ⟨f⟩ in Old Spanish) comes from the internal /f/ of the Latin verb: it first became /h/ and then moved to the start of the word once the following /l/ had become palatal, through a form Wiktionary gives as Vulgar Latin *faflāre.^[2][1] The same happened in īnflō > Old Spanish finchar, modern hinchar.^[2][1] Corominas rejects Malkiel's view that the /h/ is due to the influence of that verb.^[2]

How “to blow upon” became “to find” is debated.^[2][9] Diez and Ascoli started from “to blow upon something”, hence “to reach it with the breath”, “to touch” and “to find”, and Meyer-Lübke followed them; the REW, citing Diez and Meyer-Lübke, alternatively sees the origin in farming, where the verb was said of hot winds and diseases that attack plants and animals.^[2][9] Schuchardt finally preferred the language of hunting, where the dog “scents” the track of its quarry and so finds it;^[2][5][11] Corominas finds this the most convincing, without ruling out the other uses.^[2][5][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Around 950 the Glosas Emilianenses gloss Latin invenire “to find” with aflare, and the Glosas Silenses use it in the same way.^[2][5] In the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) fallar already means “to find”: the Cid reaches his lodging in Burgos and fallóla bien cerrada “he found it shut tight”.^[12][3]

Semantic evolution

In Alfonso X's prose the verb already means “to come upon”, “to discover”, “to notice” and “to understand after reflection”.^[13] The medieval form fallar also took the legal sense “to give judgment”, from “to find the applicable law” and “to establish the facts”; legal language kept the old ⟨f⟩ there, and its derivative fallo “sentence” is first recorded in 1646.^[2][5]

Covarrubias in 1611 derived the verb fancifully from a Greek word for “shining” and recorded the proverb Quien guarda halla “he who saves, finds” and the sentence formula Fallamos… of judges.^[14] Autoridades notes that the verb was formerly fallar.^[15] The Academy's 19th-century editions list the reflexive “to be present” and its use with adjectives and participles for a state, as in hallarse contento.^[16][17] The DLE keeps these senses beside “to find” with or without searching and “to discover”.^[6]

The phrase hallar menos “to miss” survives colloquially beside echar de menos.^[6][2] In New Mexico hallársela means “to fall into a habit”.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 950 – the Glosas Emilianenses gloss Latin invenire with aflare.^[2][5]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses fallar “to find”.^[5][12]
• c. 1180 – the Auto de los Reyes Magos has nol podemos fallar “we cannot find him”.^[12]
• 13th century – Berceo writes hallar once, beside the usual fallar.^[2][18]
• 14th century – fallar takes the legal sense “to give judgment”.^[5]
• 1490 – Alfonso de Palencia records the noun hallazgo, as fallazgo.^[2][5]
• 1509 – first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico, spelt allé.^[19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the proverb Quien guarda halla.^[14]
• 1646 – fallo “sentence” is first recorded.^[5]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades notes the old form fallar.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. To find someone or something one is looking for: Por fin hallé las llaves.^[6][1]
2. To come across someone or something without looking for it.^[6][1]
3. To discover or invent something unknown until then.^[6][20]
4. To see, notice or observe.^[6]
5. To find out the truth of something; to work out a result: hallar el resultado de una suma.^[6][20]
6. To discover a land or country that was not known before.^[6]
7. To understand after reflection.^[6]
8. (reflexive) To be present; to be in a place: Ahora me hallo en Sevilla.^[6][21]
9. (reflexive) To be in a certain state: hallarse enfermo.^[6]
10. (reflexive) To feel at ease somewhere.^[20][21][1]

Word family

• hallazgo
• hallador

Related words

• hinchar
• resollar
• soplar
• fallar
• fallo
• Latin afflō
• Portuguese achar

Usage notes

The legal verb fallar “to give judgment” is the same word in its medieval form.^[2][5] Hallarse en todo means to meddle and go everywhere uninvited.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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 r s Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 308
3. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 250
4. ^ a b Cobos, Rubén (1983), A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, p. 102
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hallar
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. hallar
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 261
10. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. afayar
11. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. hallar
12. ^ 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. hallar
13. ^ 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. hallar
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. 959
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 125
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 380
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 403
18. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 403
19. ^ 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. fallar
20. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hallar
21. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. hallar