navegar

Forms

navegar (first-person singular present navego, first-person singular preterite navegué, past participle navegado)^[1] Old Spanish wrote it nauegar;^[1][2] navigar and navear occur once each in the DEMel's records.^[3] The form navear is also found in 14th-century prose, in the Cuento de don Tristán de Leonís and the Sumas de la historia troyana.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish navegar, inherited from Latin navigō (“to go by ship, sail”).^[5][1][2] Corominas lists it among the derivatives of nave and dates it 1438.^[6]

The same Latin verb is Portuguese navegar, Catalan navegar, Italian navigare and French nager;^[7][2][8] Occitan has a form with another suffix, Occitan navejar.^[7][2][8]

The Latin verb is formed from nāvis (“ship”) and agō (“to drive, lead”).^[9][10] De Vaan traces the noun to Proto-Indo-European *néh₂us (“ship”), probably “the floating one”, a noun from a verb “to swim”; its cognates include Ancient Greek ναῦς (naûs).^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest hit in the CDH is in the New Testament of Escorial MS I-j-6, written before 1260 in a copy of the mid-13th century: e dende naueando fueron a Antiochia “and sailing on, they went to Antioch”.^[4] The DEMel's first records, from secondary sources, are in the Libro de Alexandre (1230–1250).^[3] The sense from the start is to travel by water in a ship.^[4][12]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose uses the verb for making a voyage in a ship; the General Estoria says that the men of Tyre were guided in their nauear “sailing” by the Little Bear rather than the Great Bear.^[12] The Diccionario de Autoridades defined it as travelling by water in a vessel and added a figurative sense, going from place to place to trade.^[13] The Academy's 1817 edition also gave a transitive sense, carrying goods by sea to trade with them, which the DLE keeps as rare.^[14][5]

Travel through the air, in a balloon or an aeroplane, was added later, and the most recent sense is moving through a computer network, as in navegar por internet.^[5][15][1] Judeo-Spanish has the phrase navegar kon la fortuna for struggling against adversity.^[16] In Leonese the verb can mean to walk a great deal and quickly.^[17]

Timeline

• before 1260 – the New Testament of Escorial MS I-j-6 has naueando “sailing”.^[4]
• 1272–1275 – Alfonso X's General Estoria uses the form nauear of the sailing of the men of Tyre.^[12]
• c. 1350 – the Sumas de la historia troyana has the form nauear.^[4]
• 1438 – Corominas's date for the word.^[6][8]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary renders Latin nauigo as navegar.^[18]
• 1512 – the first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico: a ship to be checked whether it was fit para navegar.^[19]
• 1817 – the Academy records the transitive sense of carrying goods by sea.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology, from Latin navigare.^[20]

Meanings

Verb

1. To sail or travel by water in a ship or other vessel; also transitive, to sail a sea or river: Navegamos tres días por el Amazonas.^[5][1]
2. To travel through the air in a balloon, an aeroplane or another aircraft.^[5][15]
3. To pilot a ship: Mi hermana aprende a navegar en el club náutico.^[5]
4. To serve as a member of a ship's crew.^[5]
5. Of a ship or other vessel: to move forward, make headway.^[5]
6. (computing) To move through a network or computer system; to surf the internet.^[5][1]
7. (rare) To go from place to place trading.^[5][13]
8. (rare, transitive) To carry goods by sea from one place to another to trade with them.^[5]

Word family

• navegable
• navegación
• navegante
• navegador
• circunnavegar

Related words

• nave
• navío
• nauta
• Latin navigō

Usage notes

In Mexico and Honduras the colloquial phrase navegar con bandera de pendejo means to behave as if one were a fool.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4568
3. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. navegar
4. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. navegar
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. navegar
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. nave
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. nāvigāre
8. ^ a b c Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 477
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. navegar
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b c 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. navegar
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 654
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 596
15. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. navegar
16. ^ Nehama, Joseph (1977), Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol, Madrid: CSIC, p. s.v. navegâr
17. ^ Le Men Loyer, Janick (2002–2012), Léxico del leonés actual, 4 vols., León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro; electronic version, Universidad de León, p. s.v. navegar
18. ^ 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. navegar
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. navegar
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. 734
21. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. navegar