presumir

Forms

presumir (first-person singular present presumo, first-person singular preterite presumí, past participle presumido)^[1] Old Spanish texts also write presomir, as in a manuscript of the Castigos del rey don Sancho IV of 1293 and in the Libro del cavallero Cifar.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin praesūmō (“to take beforehand”), a learned word.^[3][4][5][1] The Latin verb is made of prae- (“before”) and sūmō (“to take”), the verb that Spanish continues as sumir.^[6][7][3]

Corominas traces the meaning from “to take beforehand” to “to imagine beforehand, presume”, then to “to dare, to show oneself proud”.^[3] Gómez de Silva puts the sense “to boast” down to Late Latin, where the verb had come to mean “to dare, be bold”.^[6] Medieval Latin used it for “to be sure of”, “to suppose” and “to venture, have the audacity to”.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest hit in the CDH is in the Libro de los doce sabios (c. 1237, in a copy of the late 14th or early 15th century), where young men presumen de sý that they will win honour by their own hands, “are confident of themselves”.^[2] The oldest text without a later copy is the Aragonese law book Vidal Mayor (c. 1250), in the legal sense “to presume”: Presume el fuero aqueill deudo que no es pagado “the law presumes that debt to be unpaid”.^[2] Corominas's first record is later, the Corbacho of 1438.^[4][3]

Semantic evolution

Nebrija gave only the proud sense, rendering it with Latin arrogo and insolesco.^[9][10] Covarrubias in 1611 had both senses, “to suspect” and “to have a high opinion of oneself”, and glossed presumido as “the over-confident one”.^[11] The Diccionario de Autoridades kept the two senses apart, the transitive “to suspect, conjecture from signs” and the intransitive “to boast, trust oneself too much”, and later Academy editions labelled them active and neuter.^[12][13] The 2001 edition added a third intransitive sense, “to take great care of one's appearance so as to look attractive”.^[14]

In the Americas the verb took the sense “to court, woo a woman”, which Alemany recorded for Argentina in 1917 and Malaret for Bolivia.^[15][16] The DAMER has it for Bolivia, and “to flirt” for north-western Argentina.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1237 – the Libro de los doce sabios has presumen de sý, in a copy of about 1400.^[2]
• c. 1250 – the Vidal Mayor uses the verb in its legal sense.^[2]
• 1438 – the Corbacho, Corominas's first record.^[4][3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin arrogo and insolesco as its equivalents.^[9][10]
• 1515 – the first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme: se presume fraude.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the senses “to suspect” and “to think highly of oneself”.^[11]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades separates the transitive and the intransitive senses.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary derives it from Latin praesumere.^[19]
• 1917 – Alemany records the Argentine sense “to court a woman”.^[15]
• 2001 – the Academy adds the sense “to take great care of one's looks”.^[14]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To presume, suppose or conclude something from the signs one has: Presumo que la carta llegará mañana.^[5][20][1]
2. (intransitive, with de) To boast, show off, be very proud of oneself or of one's things: Mi vecino presume de sus tomates.^[5][20][1]
3. (intransitive) To take great care over one's appearance in order to look attractive.^[5][14]
4. (Bolivia) To court a woman;^[17][16] (north-western Argentina) to flirt.^[17][16]

Word family

• presumido
• presumible

Related words

• presunción
• presunto
• presuntuoso
• sumir
• asumir
• resumir
• Latin praesūmō

Usage notes

The verb has two past participles: the regular presumido, used in the compound tenses and as an adjective “vain”, and the irregular presunto “alleged, supposed”.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 335
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sumir
5. ^ a b c d 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. presumir
6. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. presumir
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
9. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 400
10. ^ 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. presumir
11. ^ 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. 1228
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 369
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 701
14. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. presumir
15. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1368
16. ^ a b c Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 682
17. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. presumir
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. presumir
19. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 862
20. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. presumir
21. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 214