hilar

Forms

hilar (first-person singular present hilo, first-person singular preterite hilé, past participle hilado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin fīlō (“to spin”), through Old Spanish filar.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin verb is formed from fīlum (“thread”) and is documented from the 4th century;^[1][5][6] Papias glosses Latin neō (“to spin”) with it.^[1][5][6] Corominas calls it a derivative common to all the Western Romance languages: Portuguese fiar, Galician fiar, Asturian filar, Aragonese filar, Catalan filar, Occitan filar, French filer and Italian filare.^[2][7][8] In Spanish it can also be taken as from Spanish hilo + -ar, the noun that continues the Latin word.^[1]

The Latin initial /f/ became an aspirated /h/ and was later lost, as in hilo;^[2] Corominas notes that the forms with ⟨f-⟩ were kept in filo “edge”, so that the language came to distinguish the two senses by their form.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest records are in the 13th-century fueros of Extremadura: the Fuero de Cáceres (1234–1275) fines anyone who spins flock, Qui borra filare, and the Fuero de Usagre (1242–1275) has a heading Qui filar borra.^[9] The participle used as a noun is older: filato “spun yarn” is in a charter of 1050.^[2][3] Corominas finds the sense of filó in Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo unclear, and dates the verb from Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias in 1611 called spinning the occupation of diligent housewives, and recorded the proverbs Quien hila y tuerce, bien se le parece and Poco a poco hila la vieja el copo, on the value of steady work, with the belief that the spider taught people to spin and weave.^[10] Autoridades added the figurative sense “to reason, devise, infer one thing from another”, as in hilar un discurso or un enredo, and the phrase hilar delgado “to proceed with great care and subtlety”, quoted from Luis de Granada.^[11] Terreros recorded hilar el oro “to draw gold into wire”.^[12] Of the silkworm and the spider it was said from the 19th-century dictionaries on, and hilar en verde is to reel the silk while the worm is still alive in the cocoon.^[13][4]

Today hilar fino is commoner than hilar delgado, and the verb also means to string words or ideas together.^[14][15][1] In the Americas it is used for preparing chewing tobacco in twists, in El Salvador for marking logs or boards with a string, and in Honduras for tying tobacco leaves into bundles.^[15][16][17]

Timeline

• 1050 – filato “spun yarn” in a charter.^[2][3]
• 1234–1275 – Qui borra filare in the Fuero de Cáceres.^[9]
• 1250–1279 – the Alfonsine Lapidario tells of a stone whose cotton-like core is spun, fila se.^[18]
• c. 1330 – filar in Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor, Corominas's first record.^[2][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija renders hilar with Latin neo.^[19][20]
• 1540 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico: a mother teaching her daughter to spin.^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records proverbs on spinning.^[10]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades has the figurative sense and hilar delgado.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy derives it from Latin filare.^[22]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To spin: to turn flax, hemp, wool, silk or cotton into thread: En invierno las mujeres hilaban el lino junto al fuego.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) Of spiders and some insects, especially the silkworm: to produce the thread for a web or cocoon.^[4][14]
3. (transitive, figurative) To reason out, infer one thing from another; to string words or ideas together: Estaba tan cansado que no podía hilar dos frases.^[4][1][15]
4. (Latin America) To prepare chewing tobacco in twists.^[15][16]
5. (El Salvador) To mark logs or boards with a string.^[17]
6. hilar fino or hilar delgado: to reason or act with great subtlety and care.^[4][14]

Word family

• hilado
• hilador
• hilandero
• hilandería

Related words

• hilo
• rehilar
• hilera
• filo
• Latin fīlum
• Portuguese fiar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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, 361
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hilo
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. hilar
5. ^ a b du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre, p. s.v. filare
6. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. filare
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. filare
9. ^ 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. hilar
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. 981
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 158
12. ^ 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, 290
13. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 587
14. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hilar
15. ^ a b c d Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. hilar
16. ^ a b Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. hilar
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. hilar
18. ^ 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. hilar
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. hilar
20. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 362
21. ^ 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. filar
22. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 567