salir

Forms

salir (first-person singular present salgo, first-person singular preterite salí, past participle salido)^[1] The variant sallir, from forms such as salió, saliera and saliendo, was current from the earliest texts to the 16th century;^[2] Juan de Valdés still preferred salle to sale in a proverb.^[2] Sallir is also Old Catalan, Aragonese and Leonese, and saillir Old Navarrese.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish salir, inherited from Latin salīre (“to jump, leap; to spring forth”).^[2][4][1] The sense “to go out” is already usual in the earliest Spanish, but the Latin sense “to jump” survived for a long time.^[2]

The same Latin verb is Portuguese sair, Galician saír, Asturian salir, Catalan sallir, French saillir, Italian salire (“to go up”) and Romanian sări (“to jump”).^[5][3][1] Corominas notes that the sense “to go out” is kept only in Portuguese, Spanish and some dialects of southern France and Piedmont.^[2]

De Vaan derives the Latin verb from Proto-Indo-European *sh₂l-i̯e/o- (“to jump”);^[6][1] Wiktionary calls the origin uncertain.^[6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy), where the word already has its modern sense: the Cid prays, then rides out, salió por la puerta e Arlançón passava “he went out through the gate and crossed the Arlanzón”.^[7][2] The same poem also has the old sense “to jump”: myo Çid salió sobrél “my Cid leapt onto him” (onto his horse Babieca).^[2][8]

Semantic evolution

The sense “to jump” occurs in the Libro de Alexandre and still in the Corbacho of 1438, where a hen salió por la puerta “jumped out of the door”; editions of about 1500 change it to saltó, showing that it had become old-fashioned.^[2] Alfonso X's prose already uses the verb for going out, leaving a place, getting free of something and appearing.^[9] Covarrubias in 1611 defined it as moving from one place to another and becoming manifest.^[10]

Corominas considers salir a su padre “to take after one's father” a semantic calque of Arabic.^[2] Modern senses include appearing in public or in print, sprouting and turning out well or badly.^[4] In Nicaragua and Colombia salir means to match, of clothes.^[11]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – first record, in the Cantar de mio Cid, both “to go out” and “to jump”.^[2][7]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses the verb for coming out.^[9]
• 1438 – the Corbacho still uses salir for “to jump”.^[2]
• 1495 – Nebrija admits only salir, not sallir.^[2]
• 1520 – first record from the Americas, in Cuba.^[12]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the verb and some of its phrases.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology, “to jump, to spring”.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. To go out, to pass from inside to outside; also as salirse.^[4][1]
2. To leave a place for another: El tren sale de Sevilla a las ocho.^[4]
3. To get out of a narrow, dangerous or troublesome place; to free oneself of a difficulty: salir de una crisis.^[4]
4. To appear, to show; to be published: Ya ha salido el sol.^[4]
5. To be born, to sprout.^[4]
6. Of a stain: to come out; also to appear again.^[4]
7. To stick out, to project beyond something else.^[4]
8. Of a person: to turn out in character or ability: El chico salió muy listo.^[4]
9. In some games, to play first.^[4]

Word family

• sobresalir
• saledizo
• salida
• salidero
• saliente

Related words

• saltar
• salto
• Latin saliō
• Portuguese sair
• English sally

Usage notes

The present tense has salgo and the subjunctive salga, with an inserted g already in Berceo's language.^[14][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 139
3. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 5848
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. salir
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7540
6. ^ 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, p. s.v. saliō
7. ^ 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. salir
8. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. s.v. salir
9. ^ 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. salir
10. ^ 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. 1279
11. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. salir
12. ^ 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. salir
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 952
14. ^ Lanchetas, Rufino (1900), Gramática y vocabulario de las obras de Gonzalo de Berceo, Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, p. 878