regar

Forms

regar (first-person singular present riego, first-person singular preterite regué, past participle regado)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote rregar and arregar.^[2] The present has the diphthong /je/ (riego, riega) as early as Juan Ruiz, beside an older Aragonese rego.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rigō (“to water, to wet”).^[3][4][5][1] The same Latin verb gave Portuguese regar, Galician regar and Catalan regar, and Old French reer.^[6][7]

De Vaan notes that the compound irrigō (“to lead water onto, irrigate”) is older than the simple verb, which he traces to Proto-Italic *rig-ā- (“to lead toward”).^[8] He finds the likeliest source in Proto-Indo-European *Hriǵ- (“to stretch”), the root of rigeō (“to be stiff”), which explains the ⟨i⟩ best; a connection with regō (“to lead”), “to lead water onto the fields”, is the other proposal he discusses.^[8][1]

Since a short Latin /i/ gives Spanish /e/, which does not diphthongise, the present should have kept /e/, and Corominas explains its diphthong as analogy with verbs such as fregar and plegar.^[3] He adds that the noun Old Spanish riego (“stream, furrow”), found in Berceo, helped the change: that word is of pre-Roman origin, probably related to Basque erreka (“stream”), and had a short /e/.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas first finds the verb in charters of 1161 and 1200 in Oelschläger's list.^[3][4] DEMel has earlier records, in Navarrese documents of 1157 and in a document of 1160.^[2] The first context in the CDH is the Fuero de Zorita (1218–1250), which renders Latin aquam ad rigandum as agua pora regar “water for irrigating”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

In Alfonso X's prose the verb already means both sprinkling water on something and the supply of water by a river or canal to the land it crosses.^[10] The Diccionario de Autoridades gives four senses: watering the land and its plants, sprinkling rooms and streets to settle the dust, raining (of clouds) and flowing through a region (of rivers).^[11] The Academy added the beekeepers' sense, of bees moistening the cells that hold the brood, in 1817.^[12]

Corominas notes a modern construction with the scattered liquid or thing as the object (regar lágrimas, regar flores), which the Academy still lacked in 1884.^[3] In Colombia and Ecuador the verb came to mean “to spill, knock down, scatter, sow”, a usage Alemany called a barbarism in 1917.^[13] Today in much of Spanish America it also means to spread news or gossip, and in several countries, as a pronominal verb, to spread out over a wide area.^[14][5] It is also used of washing down a meal with wine or another drink.^[15]

Timeline

• 1157 – DEMel's earliest record, in Navarrese documents.^[2]
• 1161 – a charter in Oelschläger's list, the first record for Corominas.^[3][4]
• 1218–1250 – the Fuero de Zorita speaks of agua pora regar.^[9]
• 1250–1300 – Alfonso X's Moamín uses the verb for sprinkling water.^[10]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin rigo and adaquo as its equivalents.^[16]
• 1564 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico.^[17]
• 1591 – Percyvall translates it “to water”.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines it as pouring water on the earth.^[19]
• 1817 – the Academy adds the sense used of bees.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology, from Latin.^[20]

Meanings

Verb

1. To water or irrigate: to spread water over land or plants so that they thrive, or over a street or floor to clean or cool it: Los domingos riego el huerto temprano.^[5][1]
2. Of a river or canal: to flow through (a region), supplying it with water.^[5][15]
3. (beekeeping) Of bees: to moisten the cells that hold the brood.^[5]
4. To scatter or strew something: Se le rompió la bolsa y fue regando naranjas por la acera.^[5][15][1]
5. (colloquial, Caribbean, Venezuela) To spread (news or a rumour); also pronominal.^[5][14]
6. (pronominal; colloquial, Venezuela) Of a group of people or animals: to spread out over a wide area.^[5]
7. (pronominal; colloquial, Venezuela) To give oneself up to pleasures and amusements.^[5]
8. To wash down (a meal) with a drink: un asado regado con sidra.^[15]

Word family

• regadera
• regadío
• regadizo
• regador
• regante
• riego
• sorregar
• regadura
• regable

Related words

• irrigar
• Latin rigō
• Portuguese regar

Usage notes

The phrase regarla means “to make a mistake, to mess up” in El Salvador and Mexico.^[5][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. regar
3. ^ 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, 843
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. regar
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. regar
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. rigare
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. rigāre
8. ^ 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
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. regar
10. ^ 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. regar
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 543
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 742
13. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1433
14. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. regar
15. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. regar
16. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 407
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. regar
18. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 202
19. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1252
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 912