mar

Forms

mar m or f same meaning (plural mares)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish mar, inherited from Latin mare (“sea”).^[2][3][4][1]

The same word is Portuguese mar, Galician mar, Catalan mar, Occitan mar, French mer, Italian mare and Romanian mare.^[1][5] The Latin noun was neuter;^[2] it became feminine in Romanian and French and masculine in Italian and Sardinian, and the other Romance languages have had both genders.^[2]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *mari- (“sea, lake”) and Proto-Indo-European *mor-i-, a word for any large body of water, with cognates in Old Irish muir, Lithuanian marės and Old High German mari “sea, lake”.^[6] The Latin ⟨a⟩ comes from an unrounding of ⟨*mo-⟩ in an open syllable.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) has the word in a prayer to God the creator: „Fezist cielo e tierra, el tercero el mar” “you made heaven and earth, and third the sea”.^[7][3] The poem uses it as both masculine and feminine.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose already has alta mar “the high sea” and mar Bermejo for the Red Sea.^[9] Nebrija in the 1490s wrote mar honda and mar somera but mar Mediterráneo and mar Bermejo: the feminine for the sea in general and the masculine for named seas, the division still in use.^[2]

Autoridades in 1734 recorded the use for large lakes (the Caspian, the Dead Sea) and for a great abundance, mares de lágrimas.^[10] The 1884 dictionary records the swell of a stormy sea.^[11] In colloquial speech la mar de means “very, a lot of”: es la mar de simpática.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses the word in both genders.^[3][8]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario speaks of the great sea that surrounds the world.^[9]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin mare and pontus as its equivalents.^[12]
• 1509 – first record in the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[13]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the saying ir de mar a mar for going with great force.^[14]
• 1734 – Autoridades describes the word as being of both genders.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives its etymology, Latin mare.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. The sea: the mass of salt water that covers most of the earth's surface.^[4][1]
2. A part of it with its own name: el mar Mediterráneo, el mar Cantábrico.^[4]
3. A large lake: el mar Caspio, el mar Muerto.^[4]
4. The state of the sea, its waves and swell.^[4]
5. A great abundance of something: un mar de dudas.^[4]

Word family

• marea
• marear
• marejada
• mareta
• marino
• marisco
• marisma
• marola
• enmararse
• amarar
• aguamar
• ultramar
• marinero
• submarino

Related words

• maremoto
• mareo
• marina
• marítimo
• Latin mare
• Portuguese mar

Usage notes

Mar is masculine in standard use (el mar, los mares) and in the names of seas, but feminine among sailors, in some regions and in many set phrases: alta mar, hacerse a la mar, pleamar, bajamar and la mar de “very”.^[4][15][16] Both genders have been used since the Cid; sailors already preferred the feminine in the Golden Age, while Latin influence soon made the names of seas masculine.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 837
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mar
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. mar
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. mare
6. ^ 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, p. s.v. mare
7. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. mar
8. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 340
9. ^ 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. mar
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 493
11. ^ 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. 677
12. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 377
13. ^ 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. mar
14. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1114
15. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. mar
16. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mar