sonreír

Forms

sonreír (first-person singular present sonrío, first-person singular preterite sonreí, past participle sonreído)^[1] Old Spanish wrote sonreyr and sonrreyr; the Cantar de mio Cid has the variant verb sonrisar (sonrisós).^[2][3] It is conjugated like reír: sonrío, sonrió, sonriendo.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish sonreir, inherited from Vulgar Latin *subrīdīre, from Latin subrīdeō (“to smile”).^[1][5][3] The Vulgar Latin form moved to the fourth conjugation, as reír did;^[1][6] The French verb sourire goes back instead to a popular form with a short vowel, *subrīdĕre.^[1][6] The Latin verb was kept in all the western Romance languages: Portuguese sorrir, Galician sorrir, Asturian sonrir, Catalan somriure, Occitan somrire and Italian sorridere, as well as the French verb.^[3][1]

That verb is formed from Latin sub- (“under”) + rīdeō (“to laugh”).^[7][1] The prefix marks a lesser degree, a laugh “below” a laugh.^[8][6]

Old Spanish also had sonrisar, recorded in the Cid and a few other epic texts;^[9] Corominas explains it from the strong preterite sonriso of epic narrative, which was shifted to a weak preterite stressed on the ending on the model of other preterites and then given an infinitive of its own.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Alfonso X's Estoria de España (1270–1284) has the plain verb: „sant ponce que oyo aquesto començo se de sonreyr & dixo. non yerres emperador” “Saint Pontius, who heard this, began to smile and said: do not err, emperor”.^[9] A form sonriósele is in the Calila e Dimna of 1251, but in a copy of the late 14th or 15th century, and the Castigos of 1293 has the pronominal sonrreyrse.^[2] Corominas and the Breve diccionario date the verb only from the early 14th century, the Libro del cavallero Zifar.^[3][10]

Semantic evolution

From the start the verb was used both plainly and with a pronoun (sonreírse), and the DLE still gives both.^[2][5] Of things, it came to mean “to look cheerful”, and of events, hopes or fortune “to be favourable to someone”.^[5][4] The noun for a smile was first sonriso, from Latin subrīsus, found in the Cancionero de Baena, common in the 16th and 17th centuries and still used by Galdós;^[9] sonrisa appears in Franciosini's dictionary of 1620 and in Quevedo, and the Breve diccionario dates it 1739.^[3][10]

Timeline

• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España has començo se de sonreyr.^[9]
• 1293 – the Castigos uses the pronominal sonrreyrse.^[2]
• early 1300s – the Libro del cavallero Zifar, Corominas's first record.^[3][10]
• 1533 – the first record from the Americas, in Cuzco: sonrióse.^[11]
• 1620 – the noun sonrisa in Franciosini.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, also pronominal) To smile: to laugh slightly, without a sound: Al verla entrar, el viejo se sonrió.^[5][1]
2. (intransitive) Of a thing: to look cheerful or joyful.^[5]
3. (intransitive) Of a matter, an event or a hope: to be favourable to someone: Por fin la suerte le sonríe.^[5][4]

Word family

• sonriente
• sonrisa
• sonrisueño

Related words

• reír
• risa
• Latin subrīdeō
• Portuguese sorrir
• French sourire

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h 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, p. s.v. sonreír
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 857
4. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. sonreír
5. ^ a b c d e f 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. sonreír
6. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. sourire
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. subrīdeō
8. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. sonreír
9. ^ a b c d 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. sonreír
10. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. reír
11. ^ 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. sonreír