orar

Forms

orar (first-person singular present oro, first-person singular preterite oré, past participle orado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin ōrāre (“to speak, plead; to beg, pray”).^[2][3][4][1] Corominas notes that although learned, it has been in common use in every period.^[2] Wiktionary calls it an early borrowing.^[1] Lanchetas takes Berceo's use of the word for worshipping as a shortening of adorar.^[5]

Catalan orar, Portuguese orar, Italian orare and Old French orer continue the same Latin verb, and Romanian ura (“to wish someone well”) is its inherited outcome in Romanian.^[6][7]

De Vaan takes “to plead, speak openly” as the original meaning of the Latin verb, and finds a verb formed on ōs (“mouth”) the likeliest explanation.^[8] Rix and the LIV derive it instead from a root Proto-Indo-European *h₂er- (“to speak solemnly”), with Oscan urust (“will have prosecuted”), but de Vaan finds the evidence for that root outside Italic very weak.^[8][1] The OLD compares Hittite ariya- (“to consult an oracle”) and Ancient Greek ἀρά (ará, “prayer”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas and the BDELC date the word from Gonzalo de Berceo (1220–1250), who has many examples, such as visitaba al pueblo que de fuera oraba “he visited the people who prayed outside”.^[2][3][5] Earlier texts in later copies use it for worship: a ti oraran fijos de to padre “your father's sons will worship you” in La fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy), and oró la cruz de su senyor “she worshipped the cross of her lord” in the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215, in a 14th-century copy).^[10]

Semantic evolution

The word has been almost purely religious throughout its history.^[2] Corominas calls the senses “to speak in public” and “to beg” occasional Latinisms.^[2] Alfonso X's prose has both “to pray to God” and “to ask, beg”.^[11] Covarrubias in 1611 glossed it as “to pray” or “to declaim in the schools”, and the Diccionario de Autoridades put “to speak in public” first, followed by “to pray to God” and “to beg”.^[12][13] The Academy still put public speaking first in 1884; the 2001 edition put prayer first, and the current DLE marks public speaking as rare.^[14][15][4]

In Judeo-Spanish orar came to mean “to utter, wish (something bad)”, as in orar las del perro “to heap insults”.^[16]

Timeline

• 1220–1250 – Berceo uses orar often, for praying and for worshipping idols.^[2][3][5]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario has orare a dios, “prays to God”.^[11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija records orar como orador, “to make a speech”, with Latin oro.^[17]
• 1548 – the first records from the Americas, in Mexico City and Santo Domingo.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias glosses it as “to pray” or “to declaim in the schools”.^[12]
• 1737 – the Diccionario de Autoridades gives “to speak in public”, “to pray to God” and “to beg”.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy gives an etymology for the first time, from Latin orare.^[14]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To pray: to address God, a god or a saint, aloud or silently, often to ask for something: Los fieles oraban en silencio ante el altar.^[4][1]
2. (intransitive, rare) To speak in public to persuade an audience; to orate.^[4][1]
3. (transitive) To ask or beg for something.^[4]

Related words

• oración
• oratorio
• orador
• oráculo
• adorar
• perorar
• Latin oro

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 288
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. orar
4. ^ 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. orar
5. ^ a b c Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. s.v. orar
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. orare
7. ^ Buchi, Éva; Schweickard, Wolfgang, eds. (2008–), Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom), Nancy: ATILF, http://www.atilf.fr/DERom
8. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. ōrō
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. ōrō
10. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. orar
11. ^ a b 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. orar
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. 1176
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 46
14. ^ 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. 762
15. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. orar
16. ^ Nehama, Joseph (1977), Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol, Madrid: CSIC, p. s.v. orâr
17. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 390
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. orar