surgir

Forms

surgir (first-person singular present surjo, first-person singular preterite surgí, past participle surgido)^[1] Early American texts write surxí (Puerto Rico 1509) and sujeron (Mexico 1532).^[2]

Etymology

The nautical sense “to anchor” is borrowed from Catalan sorgir, which is common in the Catalan code of sea law, the Consolat de Mar, and in other Catalan texts from the 13th century on.^[3][4][5] The sense “to rise, appear” was taken separately and much later, borrowed from Latin surgō (“to rise, get up”), recorded from 1438 and rare until the 18th century.^[4][3][6]

Corominas derives the Catalan verb from the Latin one too: a ship was said to “rise” or “stand” in port, whence “to lie at anchor” and then “to drop anchor”, just as stō (“to stand”) came to mean “to be in a place”.^[3][5] He rejects both a reversal of the meaning “to raise the anchor” and a derivation from submergō (“to sink”), which cannot have lost its middle syllable.^[3] The word cannot be native in Castilian, where Latin ⟨rg⟩ before a front vowel gives ⟨rz⟩, and it spread from Catalan to Portuguese surgir, Italian surgere and French surgir, where it appears only in the 16th century.^[3][5] The participle surto “anchored” matches surt and goes back to the participle Vulgar Latin *surctus.^[3]

The Latin verb is a contracted form of surrigō, from sub- (“up from below”) and regō (“to guide, rule”).^[7][1][8] Its popular outcomes are Italian sorgere and French sourdre.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are nautical, in Juan Fernández de Heredia's translation of Plutarch's Lives (1379–84), where a commander surgio en mar et comando que ninguno no se mouies d'alli “anchored at sea and ordered that nobody should move from there”.^[10] Corominas's first record is Francisco Imperial in the Cancionero de Baena, early 15th century, and Columbus's log of his first voyage (1492) already says that the Admiral anchored and found a good anchorage, surgidero, on the beach.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th and 17th centuries surgir was very common in the sense “to drop anchor”;^[11] García de Palacio's nautical vocabulary of 1587 defines it as “to make port”, “to drop anchor”.^[3] The state of lying at anchor was usually expressed with estar surto, and surto then took the secondary sense “calm, quiet” in Lope de Vega and Rojas Zorrilla.^[3] Covarrubias (1611) still calls surgir a nautical term, and the Diccionario de Autoridades gives “to drop anchor” first and, as little used, “to spring up”, of water.^[11][12]

The general sense “to rise, appear, arise” is a modern learned use of the Latin verb.^[3][4] Today the dictionaries put first “to spring up”, of water, and “to appear, emerge”, and keep “to drop anchor” as a third sense;^[13] Moliner adds the sudden appearance of something immaterial, such as a difficulty or an idea.^[6][13]

Timeline

• 13th century – Catalan sorgir in the Consolat de Mar.^[5][4]
• 1379–84 – Juan Fernández de Heredia uses surgir “to anchor”.^[10]
• early 15th century – Francisco Imperial, Corominas's first record.^[3]
• 1438 – first record of the sense “to rise, appear”.^[4][14]
• 1492 – Columbus's log has surgió and surgidero.^[3][4]
• 1509 – first record in the Americas, surxí in Puerto Rico.^[2]
• 1587 – García de Palacio defines surgir as “to make port, to drop anchor”.^[3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias calls it a nautical term.^[11]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary has the sense of water springing up and an obsolete “to raise”.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) Of water: to spring up, gush upwards.^[6][13]
2. (intransitive) To appear, arise, emerge: A mitad del viaje surgió una avería.^[6][1]
3. (intransitive) To grow out of, arise from (with de).^[1]
4. (intransitive, nautical) Of a ship: to anchor, drop anchor.^[6][13]

Word family

• surgidero
• surgidor
• surgimiento

Related words

• resurgir
• surgencia
• surto
• insurgente
• Catalan sorgir
• Latin surgō
• English surge

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. surgir
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 339
4. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. surgir
5. ^ a b c d Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 8, 81
6. ^ a b c d e 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. surgir
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. surgir
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8475
10. ^ 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. surgir
11. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1311
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 191
13. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. surgir
14. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 668
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 822