sobrecargar

Forms

sobrecargar (first-person singular present sobrecargo, first-person singular preterite sobrecargué, past participle sobrecargado)^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Spanish sobre- + cargar.^[1][2] The noun sobrecarga is recorded from 1495 and sobrecargo from the mid-16th century.^[3] cargar is *carricāre, from carrus (“wagon”).^[4][3] Echegaray compared Catalan sobrecarregar, French surcharger and Italian sopraccaricare.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Fuero de Béjar (c. 1290–1293), in the heading of a law on overloading a beast of burden: De qui sobrecargar la bestia “Of him who overloads the beast”.^[6][7][8]

Semantic evolution

The Diccionario de Autoridades has two senses: to load to excess, quoted from Antonio Enríquez Gómez on burdening the towns with taxes, and a tailors' and seamstresses' term for sewing a second seam over a fold of the cloth so that the raw edge lies under the stitches.^[9] Both senses are still in the current dictionary.^[10] Domínguez added the figurative sense of overwhelming someone with sorrows and that of burdening with extraordinary taxes.^[11] In the Americas a Puerto Rican text of 1797 uses it of troops pressing the enemy with their fire, and 19th-century texts of overloading a soldier or a budget.^[12] Moliner and Vox apply it to vehicles, to work and to telephone lines.^[13][14]

Timeline

• c. 1290–1293 – the Fuero de Béjar forbids overloading a beast.^[6][7]
• 1495 – the noun sobrecarga is first recorded.^[3]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records the general and the sewing senses.^[9]
• 1797 – first record in the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[12]
• 1846 – Domínguez records the figurative senses.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. To overload; to load something or someone to excess: No sobrecargues la lavadora o no centrifugará.^[10][13]
2. (sewing) To sew a second seam over a first one, folding one edge over the other so that it is finished off.^[10][13]

Word family

• sobrecarga
• sobrecargo

Related words

• cargar
• recargar
• descargar
• French surcharger

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
3. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cargar
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. cargar
5. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 353
6. ^ 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. sobrecargar
7. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. sobrecargar
8. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 127
10. ^ a b c 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. sobrecargar
11. ^ a b Domínguez, Ramón Joaquín (1846–1847), Diccionario nacional o gran diccionario clásico de la lengua española, 2 vols., Madrid: Establecimiento Léxico-Tipográfico de R. J. Domínguez, p. 2, 1576
12. ^ a b 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. sobrecargar
13. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sobrecargar
14. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. sobrecargar