importar

Forms

importar (first-person singular present importo, first-person singular preterite importé, past participle importado)^[1]

Etymology

It is a learned borrowed from Latin importāre (“to bring in; to cause, entail”).^[2][3][4][1] Corominas thinks the figurative sense, from which “to matter” comes, arose in Late Latin, since it is shared by all the Romance languages.^[2] The commercial sense “to bring in goods from abroad” was taken up again from the Latin sense in modern times;^[5][6] Cunha and Nascentes attribute the Portuguese commercial sense to the English verb import.^[2][5][6]

The same Latin verb gave Portuguese importar, Catalan importar, Italian importare and French importer.^[5][7][8] The DHLF dates the French verb to 1536, in the sense “to require”, and links it to the Italian verb, recorded from Dante's time.^[8][2]

The source verb is formed from Latin in- + portō (“to carry”).^[1][9] It is related to portar, exportar, soportar and transportar.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH antedates the Corominas date of 1490: in 1437 El Tostado's Libro de las paradojas says that something es impossible et importa contradiçion “is impossible and implies a contradiction”.^[10] The adjective importantes is in an ordinance of Fernando I for Zaragoza in 1414.^[10] Corominas's first record is Alonso de Palencia's Universal vocabulario of 1490: no importa que sea verdad “it does not matter whether it is true”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In the 15th century the verb meant “to entail, imply” and also “to signify”, as in Cartagena's question of what the word excelencia inporta.^[10] Covarrubias (1611) gives only “to be fitting, to be of substance”, and Autoridades (1734) adds the price sense “to amount to”.^[11][12] Terreros calls it a kind of impersonal verb and gives French importer as its equivalent.^[13]

The sense “to bring in foreign goods” is a modern one: the BDELC dates it to the mid-19th century, and Corominas says it entered the Academy's dictionary in 1884, not yet in 1817, but the 1843 edition already lists it as a commercial term.^[3][2][14] Corominas notes that French had it as early as 1669.^[2] The computing sense “to bring in data from another program” is recent.^[4] Colloquial phrases of indifference include importar un bledo and importar un comino, with regional variants such as importar un cacahuate in Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua and importar un corno in the River Plate countries.^[1][15]

Timeline

• 1414 – the adjective importantes in an ordinance for Zaragoza.^[10]
• 1437 – El Tostado uses importa for “implies”.^[10]
• 1438 – the noun importancia.^[3]
• 1490 – Alonso de Palencia, Corominas's first record.^[2][3]
• c. 1492 – Nebrija translates Latin importo as “to bring inside”.^[16]
• 1537 – first record in the Americas, in Santa Marta: importa mucho verse bien.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as “to be fitting”.^[11]
• 1817 – the noun importe is in the Academy's dictionary.^[2][3]
• 1843 – the Academy lists the commercial sense “to bring in foreign goods”.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology from Latin importare.^[18]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To matter, be important; to concern, interest: No me importa lo que digan.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) Of a thing, to amount to or cost a certain sum.^[4]
3. (transitive) To import goods, products or customs into a country.^[4][1]
4. (transitive, computing) To bring in data, usually a file, from another program or a device.^[4]
5. (transitive, rare) To entail, bring with it.^[4]
6. (transitive, obsolete) To contain; to cause.^[4]

Word family

• importador
• importe
• importación
• importancia
• importante

Related words

• portar
• exportar
• soportar
• transportar
• Latin importō

Usage notes

In the sense “to matter” the person concerned is the indirect object: ¿te importa? “do you mind?”, no importa “it doesn't matter”.^[1][4]

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 i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 615
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. portar
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. importar
5. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1862
6. ^ a b Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. importar
7. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. importar
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. importer
9. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 595
10. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. importar
11. ^ 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. 1040
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. importar
13. ^ 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, 330
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 401
15. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. importar
16. ^ 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. importar
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. importar
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 587