mascar

Forms

mascar (first-person singular present masco, first-person singular preterite masqué, past participle mascado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin masticō (“to chew”).^[2][3][1][4] The Latin verb is a borrowing of Ancient Greek μαστιχάω (mastikháō).^[1] It is the popular form beside the learned doublet masticar.^[1][5]

The same Latin verb is Portuguese mascar and mastigar, Galician mastigar, Catalan mastegar, Occitan mastegar, French mâcher, Italian masticare and Romanian mesteca.^[6][7][8] García de Diego records mastigar in Old Castilian.^[8]

Corominas does not take the loss of the vowel as very early.^[2] He starts from a form *mastgar whose /g/ was made voiceless again by the voiceless /t/ before it, the same development as in contar, and compares the forms with ⟨g⟩ of Catalan, Occitan and Galician-Portuguese.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas had no record before Alonso de Palencia (1490) and Nebrija, but did not doubt that the word was in general medieval use.^[2] The CDH and the DEMel take it back to the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215, in a 14th-century copy), where the saint, alone in the desert, ate grass: como otra bestia las mascaba “she chewed them like any other beast”.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

In the Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250) a character chews grains and compares the Persians to them, sweet and soft, and Alfonso X's chronicles use the verb of starving men too weak to chew.^[9][11] Nebrija gives Latin mando and manduco as equivalents.^[12]

Covarrubias (1611) calls it a common word and derives it, wrongly, from Latin maxilla “jaw”; he records the proverb mascar a dos carrillos, for serving two opposite sides with dissimulation.^[13] Autoridades follows his etymology and adds the sense “to speak with difficulty”, the source of mascullar.^[14] The learned masticar appears in the early 17th century and has since gained ground, so that mascar is now felt as the popular word.^[2] Its main sense today is to chew something without swallowing it, as gum, tobacco or coca leaves.^[1][15]

The pronominal mascarse is used of an event that is felt to be coming.^[3][16] In Central America and the Antilles mascar alone means to chew tobacco; in Guatemala, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic it also means to put up with an unpleasant person politely.^[17][18]

Timeline

• c. 1215 – mascaba in the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca.^[9][10]
• 1240–1250 – mascarlos in the Libro de Alexandre.^[9]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España uses it of men too weak to chew.^[11]
• 1490 – Alonso de Palencia, Corominas's first record.^[2]
• 1495 – Nebrija records the derivatives mascada and mascadura.^[2][19]
• 1541 – the first record from the Americas, in Michoacán.^[20]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from maxilla.^[13]
• early 17th century – the learned doublet masticar appears.^[2]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary calls it a contraction of masticar.^[21]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To chew, break up and crush with the teeth, often without swallowing: Se pasó la tarde mascando chicle.^[3][1]
2. (transitive, colloquial) To chew food clumsily.^[3]
3. (transitive, colloquial) To mutter words (mascullar).^[16][15]
4. (pronominal, colloquial) Of an important event, to be felt to be imminent: En la sala se mascaba la tensión.^[3][16]
5. (pronominal, nautical) Of a rope, to chafe.^[3]
6. (Central America, Cuba, Puerto Rico) To chew tobacco.^[17]
7. (Guatemala, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic) To treat an unpleasant person politely without wanting to.^[18]

Word family

• mascadura
• mascada
• mascujar
• mascullar

Related words

• masticar
• masticación
• Portuguese mastigar
• French mâcher

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 868
3. ^ 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. mascar
4. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 448
5. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. mascar
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5398
7. ^ Buchi, Éva; Schweickard, Wolfgang, eds. (2008–), Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom), Nancy: ATILF, http://www.atilf.fr/DERom
8. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4193
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. mascar
10. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. mascar
11. ^ 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. mascar
12. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 377
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. 1120
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 507
15. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. mascar
16. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mascar
17. ^ a b Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 546
18. ^ 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. mascar
19. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 449
20. ^ 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. mascar
21. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 683