restar

Forms

restar (first-person singular present resto, first-person singular preterite resté, past participle restado)^[1] Old Spanish also has a form with a: rastará in the Cantar de mio Cid and rastare in the Fuero de Alarcón of about 1300.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin restō (“to stay behind, stand firm; to remain”).^[3][4][1][5] The Latin verb is formed from re- and stō (“to stand”), the source of estar.^[6][1][7]

The same verb is Catalan restar, Occitan restar, Portuguese restar and Italian restare.^[8][9] The REW considers French rester an Italianism, while Wiktionary reports the TLFi's view that Old French rester was borrowed from Latin, because it kept the /st/.^[8][1] Corominas notes the Galician rastar “to be dying”.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DEMel's first record in a Spanish text is restaron in the Comptos of Navarre of 1280.^[10] A document of 1297 about the town of Elche uses restar las rentas for seizing the revenues.^[2] Corominas's first record is much later, Alonso de Palencia in 1490.^[4][3]

Semantic evolution

Medieval Latin used the verb for “to seize, arrest”, and Old Spanish had that sense too: Corominas finds restar “to arrest” about 1300 in the Poema de Yúçuf, still used by Ruiz de Alarcón in the early 17th century, before arrestar took its place.^[11][3] The Academy listed it as obsolete in 1817.^[12]

Bénaben explains the arithmetic sense as a development of “to be left over”: from what remains after a part is taken away, Spanish came to mean taking away itself.^[13] Covarrubias in 1611 already defines it as setting aside what is left over when two quantities are compared.^[14] Autoridades has the transitive “to take away the remainder” and the intransitive “to remain, be lacking”.^[15][16] The Academy added the ball game sense, returning the ball to the server, in 1817, and the mathematical definition “to find the difference between two quantities” in 1899.^[12][17] Today it also means “to reduce, diminish”, as in restar importancia “to play down”.^[5][1]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid (in a 14th-century copy) has rastará “it will remain”, which the CDH files under restar.^[2]
• 1280 – restaron in the Comptos of Navarre.^[10]
• 1297 – restar las rentas “to seize the revenues” in a document about Elche.^[2]
• 1490 – Alonso de Palencia, Corominas's first record.^[4][3]
• 1528 – first record in the Americas, in Nicaragua: restan por cobrar.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias gives the arithmetic sense.^[14]
• 1817 – the Academy records the ball game sense and lists “to imprison” as obsolete.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. To take away the remainder of something, separating one part from the whole.^[5]
2. To reduce, diminish, take away: El escándalo le restó muchos votos.^[5][1][19]
3. (mathematics) To subtract: find the difference between two quantities or expressions.^[5][1]
4. (sports) In pelota and other games, to return the opponent's serve.^[5][1]
5. (rare) To risk (arriesgar).^[5]
6. (obsolete) To arrest, keep someone in custody.^[5][12]
7. (intransitive) To remain, be left: Nos resta una semana de vacaciones.^[5][1][19]

Word family

• restante
• resta
• resto
• arrestar
• contrarrestar

Related words

• estar
• Latin restō
• French rester
• Italian restare

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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. 2, 776
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. restar
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. restar
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 609
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 5640
10. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. restar
11. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
12. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 759
13. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. restar
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. 1262
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 599
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 869
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. restar
19. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. restar