refrigerar

Forms

refrigerar (first-person singular present refrigero, first-person singular preterite refrigeré, past participle refrigerado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin refrīgerō (“to cool”), a learned word.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin verb is formed from re- and frīgus (“cold”); besides “to cool, chill” it came to mean “to relieve, refresh”, and in Late and Medieval Latin “to restore, rest, find solace”.^[5][6][7] Corominas lists it among the learned words of the family of frío, beside the rarer frigerar.^[3]

The same Latin word is Portuguese refrigerar, Catalan refrigerar, French réfrigérer and Italian refrigerare.^{[8][9][10][1]}

The Latin word for “cold” goes back to Proto-Indo-European *sriHǵ-o/es- (“frost, bitter cold”), also the source of Greek ῥῖγος (rhîgos).^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first hit is in Hernando de Talavera's Católica impugnación of 1487, which speaks of the souls in purgatory being refrigeradas y confortadas “refreshed and comforted”, relieved of their pains.^[12] Corominas and the Breve diccionario date the verb only from about 1620 (Huerta), and DICCA-XV from 1494.^[3][4][13]

Semantic evolution

In the 15th and 16th centuries the verb meant both “to cool, temper the heat of” and “to relieve, comfort”: in 1499 a herb refrigera el calor interior, and Las Casas wrote of Indians cooling themselves in the sea.^[12] Covarrubias in 1611 explained it simply as refrescar.^[14] Autoridades kept the two senses, “to cool” and “to restore one's strength”, the second being the later one in Corominas's view.^[15][3] The modern sense, cooling a room or keeping food cold by artificial means, is the first in the current dictionary.^[2][16]

Timeline

• 1487 – first record, in Talavera's Católica impugnación.^[12]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin dictionary glosses refrigero as resfriar.^[13]
• 1571 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains it as refrescar.^[14]
• c. 1620 – Huerta, Corominas's first record.^[3][4]
• 1737 – Autoridades records the sense “to restore one's strength”.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. To make a room or other thing cooler by artificial means: Dos aparatos refrigeran la sala.^[2][16]
2. To refrigerate food or other products in special chambers, close to zero degrees Celsius, to preserve them.^[2][1]
3. To restore one's strength with a refrigerio; also pronominal.^[2][16]

Word family

• refrigerante
• refrigerador

Related words

• refrigerio
• frío
• enfriar
• Latin refrīgerō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. refrigerar
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 959
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. frío
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. refrīgerō
6. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2001), Nuevo diccionario etimológico latín-español y de las voces derivadas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 647
7. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. refrigerare
8. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. refrigerar
9. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. refrigerar
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. réfrigérer
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. frīgus
12. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. refrigerar
13. ^ 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. refrigerar
14. ^ 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. 1252
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 539
16. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. refrigerar
17. ^ 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. refrigerar