ranchar

Forms

ranchar (first-person singular present rancho, first-person singular preterite ranché, past participle ranchado)^[1]

Etymology

Corominas holds that the verb, also used reflexively, “to lodge, settle in a place”, a soldiers' word of the early 16th century, is borrowed from French se ranger (“to settle, arrange oneself”), from rang (“row”), which is from Frankish *hring (“circle of people”); the noun rancho was in turn derived from the verb.^[2][3] The DLE also derives the noun from the reflexive verb.^[4] Wikcionario instead derives the verb from that noun with the suffix -ar.^[5]

Corominas notes a problem of sound: French /ʒ/ should have given Spanish ⟨j⟩, not ⟨ch⟩.^[2] He suggests that the old military verb Old Spanish derranchar “to break ranks, charge”, used from the time of the Cid to the 14th century, shaped the borrowing, and admits that the objection, though weakened, remains.^[2] The variant ranchear arose later under the influence of the noun and became the commoner form.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Boyd-Bowman's first record is from Guatemala in 1568: a man stayed two days in the open country, without going to the village, ranchando y buscando de comer, camping and looking for food.^[6] Corominas finds the verb, as renchar and rancharse, in Cieza de León, Pedro de Aguado and Pedro Simón.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Among the conquistadors “to lodge” became a euphemism for “to plunder”, because soldiers billeted in an Indian village used to sack it: Cieza de León writes that they went a renchar, or to put it more plainly, to rob.^[2][7] Aguado (c. 1573–1581) has ranchar algún oro, to loot some gold, and Pedro Simón (1627) has soldiers who began a ranchar cuanto topaban.^[8] The reflexive sense “to stay in a place” survives in Colombia and Venezuela, and in Colombia the verb also means “to dig one's heels in”, as in Jorge Isaacs's María (1867).^{[9][10][8][11]}

In Argentina, Santamaría records it as going from one rancho to another, partying and courting, and Wiktionary gives the Argentine and Chilean sense of hanging out at someone's house.^[10][1] In Central America it is soldiers' slang for eating the army's rancho.^[12][13]

Timeline

• 1568 – first record, in Guatemala, in the sense “to camp”.^[6]
• c. 1573–1581 – Pedro de Aguado uses it for looting gold in New Granada.^[8]
• 1627 – Pedro Simón has soldiers who loot whatever they find.^[8]
• 1751 – in Venezuela, of a man lodging apart from the main party.^[6]
• 1867 – Jorge Isaacs uses ranchado for “stubbornly insisting”.^[8]
• 1942 – Santamaría records the Argentine sense “to go from rancho to rancho, partying”.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, Argentina, Chile) To hang out at someone's house; to go from house to house, partying.^[1][10]
2. (intransitive, colloquial, El Salvador, Honduras) Among soldiers, to eat the rancho, the army's meal.^[12][13]
3. (transitive, Guatemala, Colombia) In conflict zones, to cook.^[13]
4. (Colombia) To spend the night;^[9] (pronominal, Colombia, Venezuela) to settle in a place.^[9]
5. (pronominal, Colombia) To dig one's heels in, to persist in an opinion or decision.^[13][10][11]
6. (pronominal, Nicaragua, Panama) To stay on in someone's house against the owner's wishes.^[13]
7. (obsolete) To plunder a place, especially an Indian village.^[2][8][7]

Related words

• rancho
• ranchear
• ranchería
• French ranger

References

1. ^ a b c d 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, 767
3. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. rancho
4. ^ 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. rancho
5. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
6. ^ a b c 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. ranchar
7. ^ a b Friederici, Georg (1947), Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch, Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter, p. 540
8. ^ 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. ranchar
9. ^ a b c Malaret, Augusto (1946), Diccionario de americanismos, 3rd ed., Buenos Aires: Emecé, p. 702
10. ^ a b c d e Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 12
11. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. ranchar
12. ^ a b 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. ranchar
13. ^ a b c d e Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. ranchar