poblar

Forms

poblar (first-person singular present pueblo, first-person singular preterite poblé, past participle poblado)^[1] Old Leonese had polar (in the Libro de Alexandre) and the Poema de Alfonso XI has plovar;^[2] Old Galician had pobrar (1326).^[3] An Old Spanish poplaron is recorded in a 12th-century document of the bishopric of Burgos, and apoblar beside poblar.^[2]

Etymology

Corominas treats it as a derivative from Spanish pueblo (“people; village”) that Latin did not have but that is common to all the western Romance languages.^[3] The DLE and García de Diego also derive it from the noun, which continues Latin populus (“people”).^[4][5] Wiktionary and Gómez de Silva instead take it from a Latin verb populāre, which Gómez de Silva calls Medieval Latin.^[1][6] Classical Latin had populor (“to ravage, plunder”), which de Vaan lists among the derivatives of the noun.^[7]

The verb is also Portuguese povoar, Catalan poblar, Occitan poblar, French peupler and Italian popolare.^[1][3] The REW lists the Spanish verb, with the senses to settle and to come into leaf, among the derivatives of the Latin noun.^[8]

De Vaan traces the noun to Proto-Italic *poplo- (“army”).^[7] Wiktionary calls its further origin unknown, perhaps Etruscan or the root of pleō (“to fill”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas and the BDELC date it to a charter of 1120 in Oelschläger's list.^[3][9] The Liber Regum (c. 1194–1211) tells that Domitian pobló Iherusalem “settled Jerusalem”, and the Semejanza del mundo that King Perseus pobló esta çibdad “founded this city”.^[10] The participle poblado, “inhabited place”, is already in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[3][10]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages the word belonged to the resettling of land during the Reconquest: charters speak of suelos poblados & por poblar “plots settled and still to be settled”.^[10] Alfonso X's prose uses it for founding towns and for filling a place with people, animals or things.^[11] Corominas regards pueblo “village, small town” as a back-formation from poblar, like puebla and población.^[3]

Autoridades (1737) defines it as founding a settlement and making it habitable, quoting the laws of the Indies on where new towns should be built, and adds “to fill”, “to breed abundantly” and, of trees, “to come into leaf in spring”.^[12] The Academy kept these senses in 1884, when it first gave the etymology “from pueblo”.^[13] In Argentina poblar also meant “to settle down, establish oneself”, as in Martín Fierro.^[3]

Timeline

• 1120 – first record, in a charter.^[3][9]
• c. 1140 – poblado “inhabited place” in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[3]
• c. 1194–1211 – pobló Iherusalem in the Liber Regum.^[10]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario speaks of a logar poblado.^[11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija renders poblar de nuevo with Latin coloniam duco.^[14]
• 1737 – Autoridades adds the senses “to fill” and “to come into leaf”.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from pueblo.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also intransitive) To found one or more towns or settlements.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To populate a place, settle people in it to live or work there.^[4][1]
3. (transitive) To fill a place with animals or things: poblar un estanque de truchas.^[4]
4. (transitive) To breed abundantly.^[4]
5. (reflexive) To fill up with trees or other things; of trees, to come into leaf: En abril el soto se pobló de hojas.^[4][13]

Word family

• poblado
• poblador
• población
• despoblar
• repoblar

Related words

• pueblo
• popular
• Latin populus

Usage notes

The verb changes its stem vowel when stressed: pueblo “I populate”, poblé “I populated”.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. poblar
3. ^ 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, 673
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. poblar
5. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 5146
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 555
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. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6654
9. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pueblo
10. ^ 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. poblar
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. poblar
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 304
13. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 843
14. ^ 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. poblar