tajar

Forms

tajar (first-person singular present tajo, first-person singular preterite tajé, past participle tajado)^[1] The Glosas Silenses of the second half of the 10th century spell the infinitive tagare, which Corominas reads as tajare.^[2] Old Spanish texts mostly write taiar, taiado, taia, and a charter of 1011 in the Oña collection has taggat.^[3] The Asturian and Leonese form is tayar.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin tāliāre (“to cut, split”), a verb formed on tālea (“a cutting for planting; a stake”).^[2][6][1] Corominas and the DLE give the verb as Vulgar Latin, with ⟨e⟩ before the ending; it appears in the late Roman land surveyors, spelt with ⟨i⟩ as it was pronounced, meaning “to cut, split”.^[2][6] Cabrera had already cited such instances of the verb in Castilian charters of the 10th and 11th centuries.^[2] Wiktionary dates the Latin verb from the 6th century, and notes that the prefixed intertāliō appears earlier, in Nonius.^[1]

The same verb is Portuguese talhar, Galician tallar, Asturian tayar, Aragonese tallar, Catalan tallar, Occitan talhar, Old French taillier, Italian tagliare and Romanian tăia.^[4][1] Corominas calls it pan-Romance.^[2] Spanish also has the doublet tallar “to carve”, which he considers taken from the Italian verb (or, as a gaming term, from the Catalan one).^[2][1]

De Vaan finds no viable etymology for the Latin noun unless it is derived from tālus (“ankle, knuckle”); he calls the comparison with Ancient Greek τᾶλις (tâlis, “girl, bride”) a wild guess.^[7] Wiktionary mentions the traditional derivation from Proto-Indo-European *teh₂l- (“to grow”), a root whose existence has been called into question.^[1] Of the old etymologies, Covarrubias derived the verb from taxō and the Academy's 1899 dictionary from German theilen; neither is accepted today.^[8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is the Glosas Silenses, of the second half of the 10th century, where the gloss tagare stands for tajare.^[2][3] The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) uses the participle in a vow: nin entrarié en ella tigera ni un pelo non avrié tajado “no scissors would enter it, nor would a single hair be cut”.^[10][11]

Semantic evolution

In the Middle Ages the verb was used far more widely than today: it covered every sense of cortar, as its cognates still do in the other Romance languages.^[2] The Cid uses it of laying waste to orchards, and the chronicles of a día tajado, a day fixed or agreed on; in the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca a woman is en buena forma tajada “well shaped”.^[11][10] Alfonso X's prose uses it for cutting a thing into parts, for dividing land by a wall, a river or a furrow, for checking a person in what they do, and for dressing stone, canto tajado.^[12]

Nebrija gives Latin seco and scindo as its equivalents.^[13][14] From Autoridades on the Academy also records the special sense of cutting a quill so that one can write with it; the DLE now marks that sense as little used.^[15][6] Moliner and the Vox dictionary record the informal pronominal tajarse “to get drunk”.^[16][17] In Peru and Bolivia the verb means “to sharpen a pencil”, a sense the Asturian tayar shares.^[18][5]

Timeline

• 950–1000 – the Glosas Silenses gloss with tagare.^[2]
• 1011 – a charter of the Oña collection has the form taggat.^[3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses the participle tajado.^[10][2]
• 1208 – the Cortes of León use the derived noun taja for a levy, in the earliest record of the family without a later copy.^[10]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España speaks of a theatre of canto tajado “dressed stone”.^[12]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija translates it with Latin seco and scindo.^[13]
• 1532 – the first record from the Americas, a rock tajada “sheer” all round, in Mexico.^[19]
• 1591 – Percyvall glosses it “to cut”.^[20]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades adds the sense of cutting quills for writing.^[15]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary derives it, wrongly, from German.^[9]

Meanings

Verb

1. To divide something into two or more parts with a blade; to cut, slice, chop: El cocinero tajó el pan en rebanadas gruesas.^[6][1][16]
2. (rare) To cut a quill so that it can be used for writing.^[6][15]
3. (Peru, Bolivia) To sharpen a pencil.^[18]
4. (colloquial, as tajarse) To get drunk.^[16][17]

Word family

• tajada
• tajo
• atajar
• retajar
• tajante
• tajadera
• destajar
• destajo

Related words

• tallar
• talle
• Latin tālea
• Portuguese talhar

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 Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 381
3. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock
4. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. taliare
5. ^ a b Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. tayar
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. tajar
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1315
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía
10. ^ 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
11. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando, p. 403
12. ^ 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)
13. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
14. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (c. 1495), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca (facsimile, Madrid: Real Academia Española 1951), p. s.v. tajar
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 212
16. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos
17. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial
18. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer
19. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies
20. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 218