mostrar

Forms

mostrar (first-person singular present muestro, first-person singular preterite mostré, past participle mostrado)^[1] A variant mossar occurs in the Proverbios de Salomón, in several 16th-century playwrights and in Galician;^[2][3] García de Diego gives Old Castilian mosar.^[2][3] The stressed o becomes ue in some persons and tenses: muestro, muestra, muestren.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mōnstrāre (“to show, point out; advise”).^[2][5][6][1] The word is found in every period and in all the Romance languages: Portuguese mostrar, Galician mostrar, Catalan mostrar, French montrer, Italian mostrare and Romanian mustra.^[2][3][1]

Corominas doubts that the vowel was close in Vulgar Latin, despite Italian mostra.^[2] Latin vowels were lengthened where /ns/ stood before a vowel, but before a consonant the group may have been simplified without lengthening, as in costar;^[2] Spanish has always had muestra, and mostra is the same.^[2] Latin already had the archaic spelling mostro.^[7]

The Latin verb is derived from mōnstrum (“portent, sign, monster”).^[8][1][9] De Vaan derives the noun from *mone-stro-, a noun of moneō (“to remind, warn”), from Proto-Indo-European *mon-eie- (“to make think of, remind”), with the /n/ restored in a form that would regularly have lost it.^[10] Bénaben notes that the verb lost the religious sense of the portent and kept only “to point out” and “to advise”.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates it to the beginnings of the language, with the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140), and the BDELC gives about 1140.^[2][5] DEMel cites an earlier primary record in the Glosas Emilianenses, about 950.^[11] In the Cid a prayer tells how Christ walked the earth mostrando los miráculos “showing the miracles”: the sense is “to show, make visible”.^[12][13]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish the verb also meant “to teach”, Latin docere: a 13th-century poem says Lady Luisa taught the child to greet the Virgin, mostrólo... saludar, and Cervantes still writes that people se curten y muestran a sufrir las inclemencias “harden themselves and learn to bear the weather”.^[2] Berceo used it for “to show, point out”, “to confess” and “to warn, instruct”.^[14] In some popular speech today the verb is in decline, replaced by enseñar in its literal sense.^[2]

The Diccionario de Autoridades gives the senses “to put in view”, “to explain or prove” and “to feign, give to understand what is not so”.^[4] Covarrubias in 1611 records mostrador as the hand of a clock;^[15][2][5] Alonso de Palencia had used it for the index finger in 1490, and the sense of a shop counter is in Autoridades.^[15][2][5] In Latin America phrases such as mostrar la hilacha (Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay) and mostrar el cobre (Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia) mean to let one's hidden faults show.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 950 – DEMel's first primary record, in the Glosas Emilianenses.^[11]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses mostrar; the derivative demostrar is also in the Cid.^[2][5]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses it for showing colours and for explaining.^[17]
• 1288 – the noun muestra is first recorded.^[5][2]
• 1490 – dedo mostrador “index finger”.^[2][5]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija renders it with Latin monstro, commonstro and demonstro.^[18]
• 1602 – the first record from the Americas, in Mexico.^[19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Latin monstrare.^[15]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology Del lat. monstrare.^[20]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To show: to put something in view, or point it out so that it is seen: Nos mostró las fotos del viaje.^[6][1]
2. (transitive) To explain, make known, or demonstrate that something is true.^[6][1]
3. (transitive) To make a feeling, real or feigned, plain to see.^[6]
4. (transitive) To show a quality of mind by one's actions: mostrar paciencia.^[6]
5. (reflexive) To behave in a certain way, or prove oneself to be: Se mostró muy generoso.^[6]

Word family

• muestra
• mostrador
• demostrar
• muestrario

Related words

• monstruo
• Latin mōnstrō

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 i j k l m n o Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 164
3. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. monstrare
4. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 617
5. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mostrar
6. ^ 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. mostrar
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. mostrar
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. mostrar
12. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. mostrar
13. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 358
14. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 507
15. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1150
16. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. mostrar
17. ^ 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. mostrar
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 383
19. ^ 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. monstrar
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 721