pisar

Forms

pisar (first-person singular present piso, first-person singular preterite pisé, past participle pisado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin pinsāre (“to pound, crush”), a first-conjugation variant of the classical third-conjugation verb “to beat, pound, crush”.^[2][3][4] Corominas notes that this variant, and a popular pronunciation of it without the /n/, occur in an archaic author and in several late Latin writers.^[2] Wiktionary gives the same chain through pisar.^[1]

The word is above all Castilian and Portuguese: Portuguese pisar and Galician pisar are used in the same general sense, while Catalan pisar is old and dialectal in Catalan, and the verb survives with narrower senses in Occitan, Romanian, Romansh and southern Italy.^[2][5][6] Coromines records the Catalan verb from the 14th century, with the senses “to tread” and “to ram earth”.^[5]

The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Italic *pinsō, a present with a nasal infix built on the root Proto-Indo-European *peys- (“to crush”).^[7][1] Its cognates include Sanskrit पिनष्टि (pinaṣṭi, “grinds”) and Ancient Greek πτίσσω (ptíssō, “to winnow, peel”).^[1][8] From the same Latin family come pīla (“mortar”), pīlum (“pestle; javelin”) and pistor (“miller, baker”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record in the CDH is in La Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200, in a 13th-century copy), in the biblical promise Tod el logar que pisaredes con vuestros pies, a vos le daré “every place that you tread with your feet I will give you”.^[9] The first copy without a later witness, the Semejanza del mundo (c. 1223), explains that the earth is so called por que la pisamos “because we tread on it”.^[9] Berceo, in the first half of the 13th century, already uses the verb for treading the ground.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

From Berceo and Juan Ruiz on, the verb meant “to tread the ground”, and also “to crush grapes with the feet”: Alfonso de Palencia speaks of the place do se pisa la uva.^[2] Alfonso X's prose has both senses, “to set the foot on” and “to crush” (roots ground for a remedy).^[10] Nebrija gave Latin calco for treading and pavio for ramming with a rammer.^[11]

The Autoridades added the senses “to ram stones or earth” and “to touch, be close to”, and the Academy's dictionaries of the 19th century added the figurative “to despise, trample on”, the treading of the male bird and the pressing of the keys or strings of an instrument.^[12][13] Today the verb also means to humiliate someone, to get somewhere before someone else (pisar una noticia), and, with a negative, not to set foot somewhere.^[4] The old sense “to pound, grind” lives on in Argentina for milling wheat or maize, and in Asturian for shelling chestnuts by treading them.^[2] In Central America and the Caribbean it is a vulgar word for having sex.^[14][1]

Timeline

• 1158–1202 – the subjunctive piset in the Fuero de Madrid, as the DEMel dates it.^[15]
• c. 1200 – pisaredes in La Fazienda de Ultra Mar (in a 13th-century copy).^[9]
• 1220–1250 – Berceo; the date the BDELC gives for the verb and for pisada.^[3][2]
• 1250 – the Moamín uses the verb for crushing seeds for a remedy.^[9]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija's Vocabulario gives pisar con pies and pisar con pisón.^[11]
• 1529 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as treading with the foot and treading grapes in the winepress.^[17]
• 1737 – the Autoridades has the verb with its derivative repisa.^[12][3]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from Latin and adds the sense of the keys and strings of an instrument.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. To tread on, set the foot on something: No pises el césped recién regado.^[4][1]
2. To press or crush with the feet or with a rammer (pisón) or mallet, as earth, cloth or grapes.^[4]
3. Of a male bird: to cover the female.^[4]
4. Of a thing: to cover part of another.^[4]
5. To press the keys or strings of a musical instrument with the fingers.^[4]
6. (usually negative) To set foot in a place: Desde entonces no ha pisado la oficina.^[4]
7. (figurative) To trample on someone (pisotear), treat them badly, humiliate them.^[4]
8. (colloquial) To get ahead of someone in obtaining something.^[4]
9. (Cuba, El Salvador, Dominican Republic; vulgar) To have sex.^[4][14]
10. (intransitive) To step, set the feet down in walking: pisar fuerte.^[4][1]
11. (intransitive; architecture) Of part of a building: to rest on something.^[4]

Word family

• pisa
• pisada
• piso
• pisón
• pisotear
• repisa
• pisapapeles
• pisaverde
• pisapatatas
• pisotón
• apisonar

Related words

• pisador
• Latin pīnsō
• Portuguese pisar

Usage notes

The set phrase pisar fuerte means to act with confidence and energy, sometimes with arrogance.^[4] Judeo-Spanish pişar “to urinate” is another word.^[18]

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 Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 565
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pisar
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. pisar
5. ^ a b Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 6, 555
6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2598
7. ^ 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
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ 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. pisar
10. ^ 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. pisar
11. ^ 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. pisar
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 282
13. ^ 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. 835
14. ^ 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. pisar
15. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. pisar
16. ^ 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. pisar
17. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1216
18. ^ Nehama, Joseph (1977), Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol, Madrid: CSIC, p. s.v. pişar