travesar

Forms

travesar (first-person singular present travieso, first-person singular preterite travesé, past participle travesado)^[1] Old Spanish wrote travessar, with present forms such as trauiessa.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin trānsversō (“to cross”), a verb Corominas notes as documented in Late Latin.^[4][1][5] Corominas treats it as an older form of atravesar, which is recorded from the Cid.^[4] It matches Catalan travessar, Occitan traversar and French traverser.^[4][6] García de Diego notes the verb in Navarre as well, and the Asturian form trevesar.^[7]

The Late Latin verb is from Latin trānsversus (“lying across, crosswise”), formed from trāns- (“across”) and versus (“turned”), the participle of vertō (“to turn”).^[8][1] Wiktionary traces the Latin verb to Proto-Indo-European *wert- (“to turn”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest Spanish records are in Berceo: the Vida de San Millán (c. 1230, in an 18th-century copy) has travessaron Castiella “they crossed Castile”, and the Vida de Santo Domingo (c. 1236, in a late 13th-century copy) Travessaron el Duero “they crossed the Duero”.^[2] The Libro de Alexandre says that Paris travessó la mar “crossed the sea”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The verb lived beside atravesar through the Middle Ages, and Nebrija still gives both, travessar with Latin oppono.^[4][9] It was carried to the Americas: a 1529 letter from Nicaragua speaks of travesando por tierra “crossing by land”.^[10] The Diccionario de Autoridades gives it simply as the same as atravesar, with a quotation on hunting with a hound through the woods.^[11] Terreros adds the weaving sense, the shuttle passing across the warp, but notes that atravesar was the usual word.^[12] Salvá records an old intransitive sense “to turn round”, and the Academy's 1899 edition derived it from través.^[13][14] Today the Academy marks it as little used.^[15]

Timeline

• 972 and 1045 – documents cited by Cuervo with the form travessar, as Corominas reports.^[4]
• c. 1230 – Berceo's Vida de San Millán (18th-century copy): travessaron Castiella.^[2]
• c. 1236 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo: Travessaron el Duero.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija lists travessar beside atravessar.^[9][4]
• 1529 – first record in the Americas, in Nicaragua.^[10]
• 1846 – Salvá records the old sense “to turn round”.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (rare) To cross; to put or lie across; the same as atravesar; also pronominal: Travesaron el puerto antes de la nevada.^[15][16][1]

Related words

• atravesar
• través
• travieso
• Latin trānsversus
• Catalan travessar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. travesar
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. travesar
4. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 791
5. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8859
7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 6816
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. travesar
10. ^ 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. travesar
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6
12. ^ Terreros y Pando, Esteban de (1786–1793), Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes y sus correspondientes de las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, 4 vols., Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, p. 3, 696
13. ^ a b Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 1073
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 981
15. ^ a b 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. travesar
16. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. travesar