necesitar

Forms

necesitar (first-person singular present necesito, first-person singular preterite necesité, past participle necesitado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Medieval Latin necessitō (“to oblige, compel”), according to the DLE, Gómez de Silva and Wiktionary.^[2][3][1] The Medieval Latin verb was formed on Latin necessitās (“necessity, compulsion”), and Du Cange records it as a word of the Schoolmen.^[1][4] The Academy derived the Spanish verb from necesidad in 1884 and 1899, and its 2001 dictionary and Moliner from the Latin noun.^[5][6][7][8]

The same verb is French nécessiter, recorded from the 14th century, Italian necessitare and Catalan necessitar.^[1][9][10]

The Latin noun is formed from necesse (“unavoidable, necessary”) with the suffix -tās.^[11][1] The adjective is itself made of ne- (“not”) and cessus (“yielded”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dated the verb only to the 17th century, but the CDH has it much earlier.^[12][1][13] A poem of Francisco Imperial (before 1407, in a copy of about 1465) uses it in the sense “to compel”: nin ella neçesitó a María la Madalena salir de pecados “nor did it compel Mary Magdalene to come out of her sins”.^[13] The first record without a later copy is Pedro de Toledo's translation of Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed (1419–1432), where it means “to require, entail”: obrador non neçesita la obra ser sienpre “a maker does not require the work to be eternal”.^[13]

Semantic evolution

In the 15th century the verb was a learned word of philosophical and legal prose, meaning “to compel” or “to require”; it is written with ⟨ç⟩, ⟨sç⟩ or ⟨ss⟩.^[13] DICCA-XV gives 1434 as its first date in the CORDE and 1448–1465 in its own corpus of the Crown of Aragon.^[14] In the Americas a text of 1605 from Nueva Galicia still uses it for “to force”, while the participle necesitado “needy” appears in Buenos Aires in 1604.^[15]

Terreros (1786–1793) gave both senses, “to oblige someone” and “to lack, be in want of”.^[16] The Academy's dictionary of 1817 made the first transitive and the second intransitive (“to have need of something”), and in 1869 it noted that the sense “to compel” was little used; the DLE now marks it as obsolete.^[17][18][2] Baralt (1855) accepted “to oblige” as good Castilian, quoting Cervantes, but condemned as a gallicism its use for “to imply, entail”.^[19] The everyday transitive use, necesito ayuda, is the main sense today, and the verb is also said of a task that takes a certain amount of material or time.^[8][2]

Timeline

• before 1407 – Francisco Imperial uses neçesitó for “compelled” (in a copy of about 1465).^[13]
• 1419–1432 – neçesita “requires” in Pedro de Toledo's translation of Maimonides.^[13]
• 1434 – the first date DICCA-XV finds in the CORDE.^[14]
• 1604 – necesitado “in need” in a letter from Buenos Aires.^[15]
• 1786–1793 – Terreros gives the senses “to oblige” and “to lack”.^[16]
• 1817 – the Academy distinguishes transitive “to oblige” and intransitive “to have need of”.^[17]
• 1855 – Baralt calls the sense “to imply” a gallicism.^[19]
• 1869 – the Academy notes that “to compel” is little used.^[18]
• 1884 – the Academy derives the verb from necesidad.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To need, require: to have need of someone or something; also intransitive with de: Necesito un martillo para colgar el cuadro;^[8][1] No necesita de nadie.^[2][8][1]
2. Of a thing or task, to take a certain amount of material or time: Este muro necesita mil ladrillos.^[8][20]
3. (obsolete) To oblige, compel someone to do something.^[2][18]

Word family

• necesitado

Related words

• necesidad
• necesario
• Latin necessitās
• French nécessiter

Usage notes

Wiktionary lists the spellings nesesitar and nesecitar as variants.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. necesitar
3. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. necesitar
4. ^ du Cange, Charles du Fresne, et al. (1883–1887), Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, augmented ed. by Léopold Favre, Niort: L. Favre, p. s.v. necessitare
5. ^ 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. 735
6. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 690
7. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. necesitar
8. ^ a b c d e Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. necesitar
9. ^ Barcia, Roque (1880–1883), Primer diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico de Álvarez Hermanos, p. 904
10. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. necessitat
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. necessitās
12. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. necesidad
13. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. necesitar
14. ^ 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. necesitar
15. ^ 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. necesitar
16. ^ a b Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 2, 656
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 597
18. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 535
19. ^ a b Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. s.v. necesitar
20. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. necesitar