hundir

Forms

hundir (first-person singular present hundo, first-person singular preterite hundí, past participle hundido)^[1] Old Spanish had fundir (Berceo), Leonese fonder (Libro de Alexandre) and fondir (Cancionero de Baena); the spelling with ⟨h⟩ appears as hondir in Alfonso de Palencia and as hundir in Nebrija.^[2] In Asturian the reflexive fundise means “to sink”.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish fundir, inherited from Latin fundō (“to pour; to melt; to rout”).^[2][3][4][1] Corominas explains the history of the meaning from Latin military language, in which the verb meant “to scatter, put to flight (the enemy)”;^[2][3] Virgil used it for “to throw to the ground”, and in Late Latin it meant “to strike down and kill”.^[2][3] From there it came to mean “to destroy, ruin”, the first sense of the Spanish word.^[2][3][5]

The modern sense “to sink, send to the bottom” spread under the influence of hondo and fondo, so that the verb seemed to be derived from them.^[2][3][6] Corominas rejects that derivation: the form Old Leonese fonder, already used of a ship going down in the poem of Alexander, shows that the sense grew out of the Latin verb.^[2] The learned doublet of the same Latin verb is fundir (“to melt, cast”).^[2][1]

The same Latin verb is Catalan fondre, French fondre and Italian fondere, all meaning “to melt”.^[7][8] The sense of ruin is old elsewhere too: Old French fondre meant “to overthrow, destroy” from the 12th to the 16th century, and Portuguese fundir can mean “to squander (money)”.^[2]

The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Italic *hundō, a nasal-infix present of the root Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰewd- (“to pour”).^[1][9] Its cognates include Ancient Greek χέω (khéō, “to pour”) and Gothic 𐌲𐌹𐌿𐍄𐌰𐌽 (giutan, “to pour”).^[9][1][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is Berceo's Loores de Nuestra Señora (1220–1250), where the arrest of Christ is told: allí falsó justicia, fundióse la verdat “there justice failed, truth was undone”.^[2][3] The sense is “to be ruined, go to waste”, and Juan Ruiz uses the verb in the same way when Death says yo sola a todos hundo “I alone bring everyone down”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages the verb meant “to ruin, destroy”: Fernández de Heredia uses it of a city, Rodrigo de Reinosa of spoiling a flock, and López de Ayala has the noun fundimiento “ruin”.^[2] The sense “to sink” occurs only now and then from the middle of the 13th century, and Nebrija gives both hundir “to throw to the bottom” and hundirse la tierra “of the ground, to give way”.^[3][2][11] Into the 16th century the verb could also mean “to melt or cast metal”, the sense of its doublet fundir: Nebrija's Latin dictionary uses it so in 1492, and so does a law of 1497.^[2][11]

Covarrubias in 1611 kept the two senses apart: melting metals, which he took from Latin fundo, fudi, and going to the bottom of the water or of a vessel, which he took from fundum “bottom”.^[12] The Diccionario de Autoridades still gives “the same as fundir” first, as a sense little used by then, and then “to sink”, “to weigh down, overwhelm” and “to confound someone in argument”.^[13] The figurative senses of ruin and despair are the most common today: to defeat utterly, to wear out, to ruin a person or make a project fail.^[14][4]

In most of Latin America, and in Asturias, fundir keeps the old sense “to ruin”, mostly of people.^[2][3] The word has passed into Paraguayan Guarani as hundi.^[1]

Timeline

• 1220–1250 – Berceo writes fundióse la verdat “truth was undone”.^[2][3]
• 1284–1345 – the second part of Alfonso X's Estoria de España uses fondia for heaven and earth seeming to crash down.^[15]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary uses hundir for melting metals.^[11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija's Spanish–Latin dictionary gives hundir echar a lo hondo “to throw into the deep”.^[11][16]
• 1532 – a record from Mexico has the old sense “to ruin”: nos havía a todos de hundir “he was going to ruin us all”.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias separates the senses “to melt” and “to sink”.^[12]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades calls the sense “to melt” little used.^[13]
• 1843 – the Academy's dictionary records the phrase aunque se hundiera el mundo “even if the world caved in”.^[18]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology for the first time, from Latin fundere “to throw down”.^[19]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also reflexive) To sink: to push something into the depths or below the surface: El temporal hundió dos pesqueros.^[4][1]
2. (transitive, also reflexive) To dent or press in a surface: Se hundió el colchón con el peso.^[4]
3. (transitive) To overwhelm, crush or deeply depress someone: La noticia del despido lo hundió.^[4][14]
4. (transitive) To defeat someone in an argument, confound with reasons.^[4][13]
5. (transitive) To destroy, ruin; to make a plan or business fail: La crisis hundió su pequeño negocio.^[4][14][1]
6. (transitive, obsolete) To melt or cast metal (fundir).^[4]
7. (reflexive) Of a building: to collapse, fall down.^[4][1]
8. (reflexive) Of a person or thing: to sink, go under.^[4][1]
9. (reflexive) Of a place: to be in an uproar, full of quarrels or noise.^[4]
10. (reflexive, colloquial) Of a thing: to vanish, so that nobody can find it.^[4]

Word family

• hundimiento
• hundible
• rehundir

Related words

• fundir
• hondo
• fondo
• Catalan fondre

Usage notes

The phrase aunque se hunda el mundo means “come what may”.^[20][18][1] In Latin America the sense “to ruin” belongs to fundir, not to hundir.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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 Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 428
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hundir
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. hundir
5. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. hundir
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. hundir
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. fundere
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. fundere
9. ^ 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
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. fundo
11. ^ a b c d 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. hundir
12. ^ 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. 1003
13. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 192
14. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hundir
15. ^ 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. hundir
16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 364
17. ^ 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. fondir
18. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 397
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 581
20. ^ Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 971