llorar

Forms

llorar (first-person singular present lloro, first-person singular preterite lloré, past participle llorado)^[1] Old Spanish texts sometimes keep the Latin spelling: ploro, plorando, ploraré, beside llorar and the prefixed allorar.^[2][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin plōrō (“to cry out, wail”).^[3][4][5][1] The verb is used in every period and is common to all the Romance languages except Romanian, though modern Italian has lost it.^[3][6] It is Portuguese chorar, Galician chorar, Asturian llorar, Catalan plorar, Occitan plorar, French pleurer and old Italian piorare.^[7][3][1] The Latin initial ⟨pl⟩ gave Spanish ⟨ll⟩ and Portuguese ⟨ch⟩, and stayed in Catalan.^[7][8]

In Latin the verb first meant “to cry out”, as in a law of Servius Tullius, and then “to wail, weep aloud”.^[9][10] Bénaben and the DHLF describe it as an expressive word of popular Latin that became a synonym of lacrimō (“to shed tears”), and it passed into Romance with that sense.^[11][6] Its origin is unknown: de Vaan gives no etymology, finds a dissimilation from a compound of prō and ōrō (“to plead”) unlikely, and mentions the ancient idea that explōrō (“to explore”) first meant to search the hunting ground by shouting.^[12] Wiktionary suggests a sound-symbolic origin, or perhaps Proto-Indo-European *pleh₃(w)- (“to flow”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Cantar de mio Cid, about 1140: De los sos ojos tan fuertemientre llorando, tornava la cabeça e estávalos catando “weeping so hard from his eyes, he turned his head and stood looking at them”.^[3][4][13] The earliest hit of the verb in a manuscript of its own time is in the Libre dels tres reys d'Orient (c. 1230–1260): demandol por que lloraua “she asked him why he was weeping”.^[13]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose already has the main senses: to shed tears, of eyes that water from illness, to feel something deeply, and of babies crying aloud.^[14] The Diccionario de Autoridades added “to lament one's misfortunes”, “to plead poverty” and, of vines and other plants, “to drip sap”, quoting Tan comun es llorar las vides, como llorar el hombre.^[15] Poets spoke of llorar la aurora or llorar perlas for the falling of dew.^[16]

The proverb el que no llora no mama “the baby who doesn't cry doesn't get fed”, that is, one has to ask for what one wants, was in the Academy's dictionary in 1884;^[17] Salvá had it as quien no llora no mama.^[17][18] The derivatives lloro (about 1295), lloroso (1220–1250) and llorón (early 17th century) are old, while deplorar (1499) and implorar (1438) were taken later from Latin compounds of the same verb.^[4][3]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – first record, in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[4][13]
• c. 1223 – the noun lloro in the Semejanza del mundo.^[13]
• 1250–1279 – the Lapidario of Alfonso X: a sabor de llorar & de estar triste “inclined to weep and to be sad”.^[14]
• 1280 – Alfonsine prose uses it of a newborn baby crying.^[14]
• 1563 – first record from the Americas, in Yucatán.^[19]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the senses “lament”, “plead poverty” and “drip sap”.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology and the proverb el que no llora no mama.^[17]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, also transitive) To cry, to weep, to shed tears: El niño lloraba de miedo.^[5][1]
2. Of the eyes, to water: Con este humo me lloran los ojos.^[5]
3. Of a vine in early spring, to bleed sap.^[5]
4. (transitive) To feel deeply, to mourn: El pueblo entero lloró a su alcalde.^[5][1]
5. (transitive) To dwell on one's hardships or needs, especially to get something: Siempre está llorando miserias.^[5][20]

Word family

• lloriquear
• lloro
• lloroso
• llorón
• llorera
• llorica
• llorasangre

Related words

• deplorar
• implorar
• Latin plōrō
• Portuguese chorar

Usage notes

Set phrases include llorar a moco tendido “to cry one's eyes out” and the proverb quien bien te quiere te hará llorar.^[1][21] In Guatemala the verb is also used of paint or salt that gives off its damp.^[22]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. llorar
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 732
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. llorar
5. ^ 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. llorar
6. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. pleurer
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. plorare
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
9. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. llorar
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. llorar
14. ^ a b c 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. llorar
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 425
16. ^ 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
17. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 658
18. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 675
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. llorar
20. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. llorar
22. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. llorar