pulverizar

Forms

pulverizar (first-person singular present pulverizo, first-person singular preterite pulvericé, past participle pulverizado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin pulverizō (“to reduce to dust”), a learned word.^[2][1][3] The DLE calls the source Medieval Latin, the DTME and Wiktionary Late Latin; the Latin verb is recorded in Vegetius' treatise on veterinary medicine, of powdered frankincense.^[2][4][1][5] It is formed from pulvis (“dust”) with the suffix -izō, ultimately of Greek origin.^[4][5]

The Latin noun goes back to *pe/olaw-is-; de Vaan derives it from Proto-Indo-European *pe/olH-u- (“chaff”) and compares palea (“chaff”).^[6] Wiktionary reports the traditional connection with *pel- (“flour, dust”) and with pollen.^[1] The inherited Spanish outcome of the Latin noun is polvo, from the Vulgar Latin neuter *pulvus.^[7][3]

The same Late Latin verb was borrowed as French pulvériser (1314), Italian polverizzare and Portuguese pulverizar.^[8][9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record is the participle in the 1495 Spanish translation of Gordonio's Lilio de medicina, in a recipe with açúcar pan pulverizado “powdered loaf sugar”.^[11] The infinitive follows in 1498 in López de Villalobos's Sumario de la medicina, of grinding castoreum and incense for a remedy.^[11] The first sense was thus “to grind to powder”, a word of pharmacy, as Terreros still labelled it in the 18th century.^[12]

Semantic evolution

These early records antedate the dates in the dictionaries: the BDELC and Segura Munguía put the word in the 19th century, and the DTME dates it from 1656.^[3][9][4] Through the 16th century it stayed in medical and pharmaceutical writing, as in the 1515 Compendio de boticarios and Huerta's 1599 translation of Pliny, though a figurative use, virtues pulverizadas “ground to dust”, appears in a sermon of Alonso de Cabrera before 1598.^[11]

The Academy entered the word in 1817 with the sense “to reduce to powder”; the 1884 edition gave the pronominal use, and the 1899 edition added “to spray a liquid in very fine drops”.^[13][14][15] The French verb took the spraying sense in 1866.^[8] A figurative use, “to crush an opponent”, is recorded in Havana in 1824, and in the late 19th century Echegaray noted the moral sense of demolishing an argument.^[16][17] The DLE now gives this as its third sense.^[2]

Timeline

• 1495 – first record, the participle pulverizado, in the translation of Gordonio's Lilio de medicina.^[11]
• 1498 – the infinitive in López de Villalobos's Sumario de la medicina.^[11]
• a. 1598 – a figurative use in a sermon of Alonso de Cabrera.^[11]
• 1656 – the date the DTME gives for its first record.^[4]
• 1817 – first in the Academy's dictionary.^[13]
• 1824 – “to crush” an enemy, in Havana.^[16]
• 1899 – the Academy adds the sense “to spray a liquid”.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, also pronominal) To reduce something to powder (polvo); to pulverize: Hay que pulverizar las semillas antes de mezclarlas.^[2][1][18]
2. (transitive, also pronominal) To spray (esparcir) a liquid in very fine drops; to atomize.^[2][1][18]
3. (transitive) To destroy completely something immaterial, such as an argument, or to crush an opponent.^[2][18]

Word family

• pulverización
• pulverizador
• pulverizable

Related words

• polvo
• pulverulento
• Latin pulvis
• French pulvériser

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. pulverizar
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. polvo
4. ^ a b c d Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es, p. s.v. pulverizar
5. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. pulverizo
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 599
8. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. pulvériser
9. ^ a b 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. 630
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2765
11. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. pulverizar
12. ^ 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, 245
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 715
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 879
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 825
16. ^ a b 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. pulverizar
17. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 1011
18. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pulverizar