notar

Forms

notar (first-person singular present noto, first-person singular preterite noté, past participle notado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin notō (“to mark; to write down”), a word taken from Latin.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin verb meant to put a mark on something, to write or take down in shorthand, and of the censors, to brand a citizen with disgrace.^[5][6]

The same Latin verb is Portuguese notar, Galician notar, Italian notare and French noter.^[1][7]

notō is formed from Latin nota (“mark, sign”) + -ō.^[5][1] The origin of nota is unclear: de Vaan reports that it cannot come from the root of nōscō (“to know”), and that a link with sentiō (“to perceive”) has been proposed only hesitantly.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy), where Don Martino takes note of three hundred marks of silver: notólos don Martino, sin peso los tomava “Don Martino noted them, he took them without weighing”.^[9][10] Berceo uses the participle for something written down: Fue luego este miraclo escripto e notado “this miracle was then written and recorded”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In medieval texts the verb meant to write down, record or mark.^[11][10] Nebrija gives it as notar señalando “to note by marking”, Latin notō.^[3] Covarrubias (1611) defines it as to notice and to mark, and also to dictate to someone who writes.^[12] Autoridades adds “to observe, remark”, with Luis de Granada's es de notar “it should be noted”, and the senses of jotting down and of annotating a book.^[13]

The Academy's dictionary of 1869 lists the senses of censuring and of bringing discredit on someone.^[14] Today the commonest senses are to notice and to feel a sensation, and the pronominal notarse “to show, be noticeable”.^[4][15][1] In Ladino a notar ke means “it must be borne in mind that”.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – notólos in the Cantar de mio Cid (14th-century copy).^[9][2]
• 1261 – the first text in the HSMS archive.^[17]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin noto and annoto.^[3]
• 1541 – the first record from the Americas, in Michoacán.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias: to notice and to mark, and to dictate.^[12]
• 1734 – Autoridades has the senses “to observe” and “to annotate”.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. notare”.^[19]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To mark something so that it is known or noticed.^[4]
2. (transitive) To notice, observe: Nadie notó su ausencia.^[4][15]
3. (transitive) To feel a sensation or become aware of it: notar el frío.^[4][15]
4. (transitive) To jot down something, to note it to expand on later or to remember it.^[4][1]
5. (transitive) To annotate writings or books.^[4]
6. (transitive) To censure someone's actions; to discredit.^[4]
7. (transitive, rare) To dictate for someone else to write.^[4]
8. (pronominal) To show, be noticeable: Se le nota el cansancio.^[1][15]

Related words

• nota
• notable
• anotar
• notario
• denotar
• Latin notō

Usage notes

The phrase hacerse notar means to do something to attract attention.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. nota
3. ^ a b c 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. notar
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. notar
5. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. notō
6. ^ 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. 489
7. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. notar
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. notar
10. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. notar
11. ^ a b Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 523
12. ^ 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. 1167
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 681
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 541
15. ^ a b c d Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. notar
16. ^ Nehama, Joseph (1977), Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol, Madrid: CSIC, p. s.v. notar
17. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. notar
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. notar
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. 743