pintar

Forms

pintar (first-person singular present pinto, first-person singular preterite pinté, past participle pintado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *pinctāre, a verb formed on *pinctus, the Vulgar Latin participle of Latin pingō (“to paint”), whose classical participle is pictus (“painted”).^[2][3][4] The nasal of the present stem thus spread to the participle.^[5][6] The DLE puts it the other way round: a Vulgar Latin verb formed on the classical participle, with its form influenced by the present.^[7] Wiktionary calls the Vulgar Latin verb a frequentative.^[1]

The verb is used in every period of Spanish.^[2] The same Vulgar Latin verb gave Portuguese pintar, Catalan pintar, first recorded in the 13th century, and Occitan pintar, beside the older penher; the other Romance languages kept the Latin verb, as in French peindre and Italian pingere.^[2][8][9] The old participle survived for a long time beside pintado, and as the adjective pinto “spotted, mottled”, which the Tostado uses in the mid-15th century and which lives on in Asturian and Aragonese.^[2]

The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Italic *pingō and to the nasal present *pi-n-ḱ- (“to paint, adorn”), whose root also gave Ancient Greek ποικίλος (poikílos, “many-coloured”).^[10] Wiktionary gives the root as *peyḱ- (“to mark, paint”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record in the CDH is the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215, known from a 14th-century copy), where her shoes pintadas eran con oro e con plata “were painted with gold and silver”.^[11][12] Berceo uses the participle for a door smeared with blood: La puerta que non era de la sangne pintada “the door that was not painted with the blood”.^[13][11] Alfonso X's Lapidario uses the verb both for representing something on a surface and for covering a surface with colour, as painters do on wood.^[14]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias in 1611 defines the verb as imitating natural or man-made things in colours on a flat surface, and despintarse as a thing turning out otherwise than one had pictured it.^[15] The Autoridades adds “to describe in writing or speech” and “to imagine as one wishes”.^[16] Used intransitively, the verb meant “to begin to colour” of fruit (in Ovalle, 1642). From this came “to look well or badly, to shape up”, found as early as c. 1600 in Pérez de Hita; in León and the River Plate it also means “to seem”, and in Asturias and the River Plate “to show off”.^[2][3] The Academy's 1843 dictionary records the reflexive “to put on make-up” and the phrase pintar como querer “to picture things as one would like them”.^[17] By 1917 Alemany recorded the use in negative or questioning sentences, “to matter, to count”: ¿Qué pinto yo aquí?^[18]

Western Spain uses pintar for “to suit, to agree with” (a medicine, food or climate).^[19][20][7] In Mexico, Central America, Puerto Rico and Venezuela the reflexive pintarse means “to leave, clear off”, and in Mexico and Nicaragua pintar is “to play truant”.^[21][22]

Timeline

• c. 1215 – the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca, in a 14th-century copy, has pintadas.^[11]
• 1228–1246 – Berceo uses pintada of a door smeared with blood.^[11][13]
• 1250–1279 – the Lapidario of Alfonso X.^[14]
• 1251 – first record of the derivative pintor, in Calila e Dimna.^[2]
• 1374 – pinta “spot” and pintado “spotted” in an Aragonese inventory.^[2][3]
• 1513 – Nebrija's dictionary gives Latin pingo and depingo.^[23]
• 1519 – the first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[24]
• c. 1600 – Pérez de Hita uses it for “to shape up, to look well”.^[2]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines the verb and despintarse.^[15]
• 1642 – Ovalle uses it of fruit beginning to colour.^[2][3]
• 1708 – pintoresco is borrowed from Italian.^[3]
• 1843 – the Academy records the reflexive “to put on make-up”.^[17]
• 1917 – Alemany records ¿Qué pinto yo aquí? “what am I doing here?”.^[18]

Meanings

Verb

1. To paint: to represent something on a surface with lines and colours: Pintó el puerto al amanecer.^[7][1]
2. To cover the surface of something with a colour or with paint: Este verano pintaremos la cocina.^[7]
3. To write, to form letters; to mark or trace a sign.^[7]
4. To make up someone or a part of their body; also reflexive: Se pintó los ojos de verde.^[7][1]
5. To depict or describe something in words: Nos pintó la ciudad como un paraíso.^[7]
6. To brush bread or other food, usually to brown or decorate it.^[7]
7. (intransitive, of a pencil or the like) To leave a mark: Esta tiza ya no pinta.^[7]
8. (intransitive, of fruit) To begin to colour and ripen: Las cerezas empiezan a pintar.^[7]
9. (intransitive, cards) To be trumps: Pintan copas.^[7]
10. (colloquial, chiefly in the negative) To count, to matter in a place or situation: ¿Qué pinto yo en esta reunión?^[7][1]
11. (colloquial) To look, to shape up in a certain way: El futuro pinta mal.^[7][1]
12. (Spain, regional) To suit, to agree with someone.^[7][19]
13. (Mexico, Central America, Puerto Rico, Venezuela; reflexive) To leave, to clear off.^[21][25]

Word family

• pintarrajear
• pintor
• pintura
• despintar
• repintar
• pintadera
• pintado
• pintacaras
• pintalabios
• pinta
• pintón
• pintamonas
• pintiparado

Related words

• pinto
• pintoresco
• Latin pingō
• Portuguese pintar

Usage notes

Pintarla is “to put on airs”, and pintar como querer “to present things as one would like them to be”.^[7]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 558
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pintar
4. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 549
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 5008
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. pintar
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o 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. pintar
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2582
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. pintar
12. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. pintar
13. ^ a b Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. s.v. pintar
14. ^ 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. pintar
15. ^ 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. 1215
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 276
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 565
18. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1321
19. ^ a b 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. pintar
20. ^ Lamano y Beneite, José de (1915), El dialecto vulgar salmantino, Salamanca: Tipografía Popular, p. 578
21. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. pintar
22. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1959), Diccionario de mejicanismos, México: Porrúa, p. 881
23. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 397
24. ^ 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. pintar
25. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. pintar