mandar

Forms

mandar (first-person singular present mando, first-person singular preterite mandé, past participle mandado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish mandar, inherited from Latin mandāre (“to hand over, entrust”).^[2][3][4][1] Corominas glosses the Latin verb as “to entrust, give a mission to; to commit (something) to someone”.^[2]

The verb is common to the Romance languages of the West: Portuguese mandar, Galician mandar, Catalan manar, Old Occitan mandar, French mander and Italian mandare.^[2][5][6]

mandō is a compound of manus (“hand”) and a verb -dō (“to put”), with a change of conjugation.^[7][1] Wiktionary traces it to a Proto-Italic *manuðō, which also left reflexes in Oscan.^[1] It is unrelated to mandō, mandere (“to chew”), which de Vaan derives from a PIE root meaning “to stir”.^[8][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the verb to the end of the 10th century, in the Glosas Silenses.^[3][2] In the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) it already means “to order”, and it forms causative phrases with an infinitive: mandó tornar la seña “he had the banner turned back”.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

The Latin sense “to hand over, entrust” lives on in the sense “to bequeath”, from which manda “legacy” (1210) comes, and in “to send”;^[3][11][4] Covarrubias explains the latter as sending a message through a third person, the message being a mandado.^[3][11][4] The Cid also uses mandar in wishes, Dios lo mande “God grant it”.^[9] Berceo, the Libro de Alexandre and Juan Ruiz occasionally use it for “to want, permit”, a sense the Academy still listed as obsolete in 1884.^[2][12]

Covarrubias and the Diccionario de Autoridades give “to order”, “to govern” and “to offer, promise”.^[13][14] In several American countries the reflexive with verbs of motion is merely pleonastic: in Argentina mandarse mudar means simply “to leave”, and Corominas heard mandarse cambiar in Chile.^[2][4] The DAMER records many other regional uses, such as “to throw” in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia and Bolivia.^[15]

Timeline

• late 10th century – the Glosas Silenses.^[3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses it for “to order” and in causative phrases.^[9][10]
• 1208 – the Cortes de León use mandamos “we order”.^[10]
• 1210 – the derivative manda “legacy” is first recorded.^[3]
• c. 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses it for what a book prescribes.^[16]
• 1513 – Nebrija gives Latin lego for the sense “to bequeath”.^[17]
• 1519 – the first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias gives the senses “to order”, “to send a message”, “to govern” and “to bequeath”.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin mandare.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To order, command, of a superior to a subordinate: Le mandó cerrar la puerta.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To lay down a rule or precept.^[4]
3. (transitive) To bequeath, to leave something to someone in a will.^[4]
4. (transitive) To send someone or something: Te mando una carta mañana.^[4][1]
5. (transitive) To entrust, to commission something.^[4]
6. (transitive) To express the wish that something be done.^[4]
7. (transitive, equitation) To control a horse with skill and confidence.^[4]
8. (transitive, obsolete) To offer, to promise.^[4]
9. (intransitive, also transitive) To govern, to be in charge.^[4][1]
10. (reflexive) Of a sick person: to move about unaided.^[4]
11. (reflexive, Latin America) With an infinitive, to carry out the action it names: mandarse a mudar “to clear off”.^[4][1]
12. (reflexive, rare) Of a room: to communicate with another.^[4][1]

Word family

• manda
• mandadero
• mandado
• mandamiento
• mando
• mandón
• desmandar
• mandador

Related words

• comandar
• demandar
• encomendar
• mandato
• recomendar
• Portuguese mandar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 800
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mandar
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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. mandar
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4094
7. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b c Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 333
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. mandar
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. 1109
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 669
13. ^ 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. 1108
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. mandar
15. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. mandar
16. ^ 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. mandar
17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 376
18. ^ 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. mandar