mudar

Forms

mudar (first-person singular present mudo, first-person singular preterite mudé, past participle mudado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish mudar, inherited from Latin mūtō (“to change”).^[2][3][4][1] The learned mutar is a doublet taken later from the same Latin verb.^[1]

The same verb is found in all the Romance languages, though its range of meaning has narrowed since Latin: Portuguese mudar, Galician mudar, Asturian mudar, Catalan mudar, Occitan mudar, French muer (“to moult”), Italian mutare and Romanian muta.^[2][5][6] The Latin verb also meant “to move, change place”, a sense kept in Old Italian, where the verb meant “to travel”, and in French remuer (“to move”).^[7][5][2]

The OLD derives the Latin verb from a noun meaning roughly “reward”, comparing the Greek of Sicily, Ancient Greek μοῖτος (moîtos, “reward”), and Gothic 𐌼𐌰𐌹𐌳𐌾𐌰𐌽 (maidjan, “to adulterate”);^[8][1] Wiktionary gives Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- (“to exchange”).^[8][1] An older view took the verb from a frequentative of moveō (“to move”), but the DHLF rejects it, since its first meaning is “to change”.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds it from the beginnings of the language, in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140).^[2][3] In the Cid it describes moulted hawks: the hero's abandoned house has perches sin falcones e sin adtores mudados, “without falcons and without moulted goshawks”.^[9] The Cortes of Benavente (1202) use it of the king's right to change the coinage: quier el Rey quisiere mudar moneda.^[9]

Semantic evolution

An archaic sense was “to move”, found in the Libro de Alexandre and Berceo.^[2] Alfonso X's prose uses it for changing nature or colour, replacing one thing with another, removing someone from an office, and the moulting of birds.^[10] Covarrubias records mudarse “to move house” and the proverb quien se muda, Dios le ayuda.^[11] In the Golden Age mudarse was also used colloquially for “to go away” (Cervantes: adiós, que me mudo), and mandarse mudar is common in Argentina and Chile.^[2]

Autoridades (1734) gives “to change”, “to exchange one thing for another” and “to remove from a post”.^[12] The 1843 edition of the Academy's dictionary added the reflexive senses “to change one's way of life”, “to change one's clothes” and “to move house”.^[13] In Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and Colombia mudar is said of a child losing its milk teeth, and in Cuba and the Dominican Republic it also means “to rob a house of most of its contents”.^[14][15] In Puerto Rico it means moving tethered livestock to fresh grazing.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has adtores mudados “moulted goshawks”.^[2][9]
• 1202 – the Cortes of Benavente speak of changing the coinage.^[9]
• 1220–1250 – first record of demudar.^[3]
• 1444 – first records of mudanza and remudar.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin muto, commuto and immuto as its equivalents.^[17]
• 1521 – first record in the Americas, in Cuba.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records mudarse “to move house”.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology.^[19]
• 1899 – the Academy enters the unrelated plant name mudar.^[20]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also intransitive) To give or take on another nature, state, form or place; to change.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To leave one thing and take another in its place: mudar de casa.^[4]
3. (transitive) To move or remove someone from a place or post.^[4]
4. (transitive; of a bird) To moult, shed feathers.^[4][1]
5. (transitive; of silkworms, snakes and other animals) To shed the skin periodically and grow a new one.^[4]
6. (transitive; of a boy) To break, go through the change of voice.^[4]
7. (intransitive) To vary, change: mudar de parecer.^[4]
8. (reflexive) To change one's way of life or one's affections.^[4]
9. (reflexive) To change one's clothes: Se mudó antes de la cena.^[4][1]
10. (reflexive) To move house: Nos mudamos a un piso más pequeño.^[4][1]
11. (reflexive, colloquial) To go away, leave a place or company.^[4]
12. (reflexive, colloquial, rare) To defecate (defecar).^[4]
13. (Mexico, Central America, Caribbean, Colombia) Of a child, to lose the milk teeth.^[14]

Word family

• muda
• mudable
• mudadizo
• mudamiento
• mudanza
• demudar
• remudar
• trasmudar

Related words

• inmutable
• mutar
• mutación
• conmutar
• mutuo
• Latin mūtō
• Portuguese mudar
• English moult

Usage notes

Mudar is also the name of an Indian shrub, Calotropis gigantea, whose root yields an emetic and antidote; this is an unrelated word, borrowed from English mudar, which comes from Hindi मदार (madār).^[4][20][1] In the Río de la Plata, mandarse (a) mudar means “to clear off”.^[2][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. 4, 178
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mudar
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. mudar
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. mūtāre
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4519
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. muer
8. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. mūtō
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. mudar
10. ^ 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. mudar
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. 1152
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 623
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 488
14. ^ 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. mudar
15. ^ Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. mudar
16. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. mudar
17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 383
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. mudar
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 723
20. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 678