marcar

Forms

marcar (first-person singular present marco, first-person singular preterite marqué, past participle marcado)^[1]

Etymology

It is probably borrowed from Italian marcare (“to mark a person or thing, especially goods”), which almost certainly continues Lombardic *markan.^[2][3][4] Its Germanic relatives include Old High German merken (“to heed, note”), Old English mearcian (“to mark, note down”) and Old Norse mark (“sign, mark”).^[2][4] Wiktionary also allows a formation in Spanish, from Spanish marca + -ar.^[1]

Corominas argues that the verb reached Spanish late and not directly from Germanic: in Catalan and Portuguese it is not recorded before the 16th century.^[2] In France marquer appears only in the 15th century, and its ⟨q⟩ betrays a foreign source; the native forms there had ⟨e⟩, Old French merchier and Old Occitan mercar.^[2] He therefore places the home of the forms with ⟨a⟩ in Italy, where Guittone d'Arezzo (died 1294) already uses the verb for “to mark, note”, and explains the Lombard form as the regular reduction of an older *markjan.^[2] Nocentini also derives the French and Spanish verbs from Italian, and traces the Italian one to Proto-Germanic *markōną (“to make a sign”).^[5] Vox, in contrast, calls the Spanish verb a 15th-century borrowing from Germanic.^[6]

The Germanic verb is formed from *marką (“mark, sign”).^[1] Its family includes *markō (“boundary, region”), the source of marca “border territory”, which Spanish took from the Medieval Latin of France.^[7][3] Kroonen traces it back to Proto-Indo-European *morǵ-eh₂.^[7] Spanish marco, the unit of weight for coin, is an older Germanism, recorded from 1026.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is a law of 1488 in the Nueva Recopilación on the mints: the standard mark weight of eight ounces delivered to each mint was to be concertado … y marcado y señalado “adjusted … and marked and stamped”, and each city was to appoint a marcador who knew how to assay silver.^[2] The first sense was thus “to put an official mark on weights or on assayed metal”, the only one Nebrija gives (marcar plata).^[2][8] The CDH has a form marquar in the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215, in a 14th-century copy), where the sense is not clear.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Corominas derives all the early senses from the commercial one, “to put a sign on goods”.^[2] The Celestina already has ramera marcada “a known harlot”, after the mark branded on such women, and Cervantes uses the verb for “to appraise” and “to take note of”: él los marcó por hebras de lucidíssimo oro “he valued them as threads of the brightest gold”.^[2][10] Covarrubias (1611) simply glosses marcar es señalar “to mark is to signal”.^[11] In 1609 the thieves' cant of Hidalgo used it for “to slash in the face”.^[12]

In the Golden Age it gained military and nautical senses: the Diccionario de Autoridades (1734) records marcar las velas, of sailing close-hauled, and Corominas mentions marcar el campo, to stake out the ground for a camp.^[13][2] Corominas adds that many later applications came from French in the 18th and 19th centuries.^[2] The Academy's dictionary of 1884 added embroidering the owner's initials on linen.^[14] Alemany (1917) gave the music phrase marcar el compás, to beat time.^[15] Modern senses include dialling a telephone number and of scoring or guarding a player in sport.^[16][1][17]

In the Americas the verb is recorded from 1519, for stamping gold with the royal die in Tierra Firme.^[18] In Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Cuba it is used intransitively of a young man visiting his girlfriend at her home.^[19]

Timeline

• c. 1215 – a form marquar in the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca, known from a 14th-century copy.^[9]
• 1488 – a law of the Nueva Recopilación on marking weights and silver, Corominas's first record.^[2][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija records only marcar plata.^[2][8]
• 1519 – the first record in the Americas, from Tierra Firme.^[18]
• 1591 – Percyvall glosses it “to marke, to seale, to stamp”.^[20]
• 1609 – Hidalgo's glossary of thieves' cant: “to mark in the face”.^[12]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as señalar.^[11]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the nautical marcar las velas.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary adds the sense of embroidering initials on linen.^[14]
• 1917 – Alemany records marcar el compás.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. To mark with distinctive signs: Marcaron las ovejas con pintura azul.^[4][1]
2. To embroider (bordar) the initials of the owner on clothes or linen.^[4]
3. To leave a mark or scar by a cut or blow.^[4]
4. To set the hair with clips or rollers; also reflexive.^[4]
5. To leave a lasting moral mark on someone or something: Aquella guerra marcó a toda una generación.^[4][16]
6. To prescribe, determine or fix: El jefe nos marcó las tareas de la semana.^[4]
7. Of an instrument, to show a quantity or reading: El reloj de la estación marcaba las nueve.^[4][1]
8. To put the price on goods for sale.^[4]
9. To bring out or stress something: Ese pantalón le marca la cintura.^[4]
10. To set a pattern, order or movement, as in marcar el paso “to mark time” and marcar el compás “to beat time”.^[4][1]
11. (sports) To score a goal or point.^[1][16]
12. (sports) To guard an opposing player closely.^[21]
13. To dial a telephone number.^[1][16]

Word family

• marcador
• marcaje
• marcapáginas
• marcapasos

Related words

• marca
• marcado
• marco

Usage notes

In Ecuador, Bolivia and north-western Argentina a homonymous marcar means “to lift or carry a child in one's arms”; the DAMER derives it from Quechua marq'ay (“to carry in the arms”).^[19]

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 g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 842
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. marcar
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. marcar
5. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. marcare
6. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. marcar
7. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b 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. marcar
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. marcar
10. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 717
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. 1116
12. ^ a b Hidalgo, Juan (1609), Romances de germanía de varios autores, con el vocabulario por la orden del a.b.c. para declaración de sus términos y lengua, Barcelona: Sebastián de Cormellas (ed. Madrid 1779), p. 186
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. marcar
14. ^ 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. 678
15. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1089
16. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. marcar
17. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. marcar
18. ^ 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. marcar
19. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. marcar
20. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 169
21. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. marcar