pacer

Forms

pacer (first-person singular present pazco, first-person singular preterite pací, past participle pacido)^[1] Old Spanish wrote the verb pascer, paçer and pacer, with present subjunctive forms such as pascan.^[2][1] Like nacer and conocer, it inserts /k/ before a and o in the present: pazco, pazca.^[3][4][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish pascer, inherited from Latin pāscō (“to feed, pasture”).^[5][6][7][1] In Latin the active verb meant “to make (animals) graze, lead to pasture”, and “to graze” was usually expressed by its passive form; the intransitive Romance sense is already found in the classical poets.^[5][8]

The same verb survives in all the Romance languages: Portuguese pascer, Galician pacer, Asturian pacer, Catalan péixer, Occitan paisser, French paître, Italian pascere, Romanian paște and Aragonese pajer.^[5][9][10]

The Latin verb goes back to *pāskō, a derivative of Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to protect, herd”).^[11][1] Its cognates include Hittite pahš- (“to protect”), Sanskrit पाति (pā́ti, “protects”) and Old Church Slavonic пасти (pasti, “to pasture”), and the same root gave Latin pābulum (“fodder”) and pāstor (“shepherd”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds the verb first in the Glosas Silenses of the second half of the 10th century, and then in a charter of 1044.^[5] The Breve diccionario dates it to the end of the 10th century.^[6] In Alfonso X's prose of the mid-13th century it is used of livestock eating grass in the fields, and of animals feeding.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The verb was in general use in the Middle Ages and the Golden Age, but the living language has tended to replace it with pastar, which has driven it out entirely in Argentina and elsewhere.^[5] Calderón still used it transitively for “to put (cattle) out to graze”, perhaps as a Latinism.^[5][3]

Autoridades (1737) added the figurative sense “to eat away, gnaw, wear down”, quoting Laguna's Dioscorides on ulcers that “go on eating” the flesh, and Quevedo.^[3] Terreros explained that the verb is said properly of beasts, which crop grass while it still grows on its root.^[13] The Academy defined it as an intransitive verb from 1869, and its 1884 edition gave the etymology from Latin pascere.^[14][15]

Covarrubias recorded the proverb no con quien naces, sino con quien paces, “not whom you are born with, but whom you graze with”, which Cervantes uses in the Quijote.^[16][17] In Asturian the verb also means “to spread” (of damage) and, colloquially, “to die”.^[18]

Timeline

• 950–1000 – first record, in the Glosas Silenses.^[5]
• 1044 – a charter in Oelschläger's list has the verb.^[5]
• 1250–1300 – the Moamín, in Alfonso X's prose, uses it of animals feeding.^[12]
• 1438 – first record of the derivative apacentar.^[6]
• 1533 – first record in the Americas, in Panama: seis ovejas y dos pastores y el prado en que pacían.^[19]
• c. 1590 – first record of pastar, which later replaced pacer in much of the Spanish-speaking world.^[6][5]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Latin pascor and gives the proverb no con quien naces, sino con quien paces.^[16]
• 1737 – Autoridades records the senses “to graze” and “to eat away, gnaw”.^[3]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, also transitive; of livestock) To graze, eat the grass of fields, meadows and pastures: Las vacas pacían junto al arroyo.^[7][4][1]
2. (transitive) To eat away, gnaw or wear something down.^[7][1]
3. (transitive) To put livestock out to pasture; apacentar.^[7][20][1]

Word family

• apacentar
• pacedero
• pacedura

Related words

• pasto
• pastor
• pastura
• pastar
• pábulo
• Latin pāscō
• Portuguese pascer
• Catalan péixer

Usage notes

Its present has /k/ before a and o (pazco, pazcan), and it is conjugated like agradecer.^[4][3] In much of Spanish America, especially Argentina, pastar is the ordinary word.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. pacer
3. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 70
4. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pacer
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 331
6. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pacer
7. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. pacer
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. pāscō
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. pascere
10. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 4829
11. ^ 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. pāscō
12. ^ 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. pacer
13. ^ 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. 3, 1
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 560
15. ^ 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. 771
16. ^ 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. 1182
17. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 816
18. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. pacer
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. pacer
20. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. pacer