llover

Forms

llover (impersonal, third-person singular present llueve, third-person singular preterite llovió, past participle llovido)^[1] The earliest texts still write the Latin cluster: plover in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar and plouer in the Liber regum.^[2][3]

Etymology

It continues inherited from Vulgar Latin *plovere, which replaced the classical Latin pluere (“to rain”).^[4][5][6][1] Corominas notes that the Vulgar Latin form is recorded in Petronius and already in archaic Latin, but that its explanation is uncertain.^[4] He finds Meyer-Lübke's idea, that it was the older form and that the classical one arose in compounds such as impluō, unlikely.^[4] The DHLF cites an imperfect of the Vulgar Latin verb from Petronius.^[7][7]

The Vulgar Latin verb is common to all the Romance languages: Portuguese chover, Galician chover, Asturian llover, Catalan ploure, French pleuvoir, Italian piovere and Romanian ploua.^[4][8][1] The classical verb goes back to Proto-Italic *plowō, from Proto-Indo-European *plew- (“to flow, float, wash”).^[1] The DHLF compares only words meaning “to pour” or “to wash”, such as Ancient Greek πλύνω (plúnō, “to wash”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas had no record older than Juan Manuel and Juan Ruiz, about 1330, but had no doubt the word existed in Castilian from the start.^[4][5] The earliest texts have the old spelling: Yo faré cras plover pedrisco mui grant “tomorrow I will make very great hail rain down”, in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy).^[9][2] The Semejanza del mundo (c. 1223) has the modern form, a land o algud poco llueue “where it rains a little”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X already uses it figuratively: God “rained” fire on Sodom.^[10] Corominas records the pronominal lloverse “to let rain in”, said of a house or room, from the mid-15th century, in the Celestina and in Guzmán de Alfarache; it is still alive in Argentina, Chile and elsewhere.^[4] The first American record, from Darién in 1520, is of a roof through which casi todo se llovía.^[11] Transitive uses such as llover piedras are general.^[4]

Autoridades in 1734 notes the change of o to ue in some forms (llueve, llueva) and the phrase llover sobre mojado “one misfortune on top of another”.^[12] Regional Spanish has many phrases: llover a cántaros is llover burros aparejados in the Dominican Republic, and in Mexico and Central America llover en su milpa means to have good or bad things befall one.^[13]

Timeline

• 1194–1211 – plouer in the Liber regum.^[2][3]
• c. 1200 – plover in the Fazienda de Ultra Mar.^[2][9]
• c. 1223 – llueue in the Semejanza del mundo.^[9]
• 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General Estoria uses it of fire raining on the land of Lot.^[10]
• c. 1330 – Juan Manuel and Juan Ruiz, Corominas's first records.^[4][5]
• 1492 – the derivative lloviznar first appears.^[4][5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija translates it pluo and depluo.^[14]
• 1520 – the first record from the Americas, in Darién.^[11]
• 1734 – Autoridades records llover sobre mojado.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. (impersonal) To rain: Mañana va a llover en el norte.^[6][1]
2. (figurative) Of troubles, misfortunes and the like, to come down on someone in abundance: Le llovieron las críticas.^[6][12]
3. (pronominal) Of a roof or vault, to let the rain through: La vieja casa se llueve.^[6][4]

Word family

• llovedizo
• lloviznar
• llovizna

Related words

• lluvia
• pluvial
• pluvioso
• chubasco
• Portuguese chover

Usage notes

The verb is mostly impersonal and used in the third person singular (llueve, llovió), with the diphthong ue in the stressed forms.^[1][12] Phrases include como llovido “unexpectedly” and llover sobre mojado.^[6][12]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. llover
3. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. 278
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 733
5. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. llover
6. ^ a b c d e 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. llover
7. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. pleuvoir
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. pluere
9. ^ 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. llover
10. ^ a b 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. llover
11. ^ a b 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. llover
12. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 426
13. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. llover
14. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (c. 1495), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca (facsimile, Madrid: Real Academia Española 1951), p. 138