trotar

Forms

trotar (first-person singular present troto, first-person singular preterite troté, past participle trotado)^[1]

Etymology

It is probably borrowed from French trotter, with borrowed from Italian trottare as the other possible source; the DLE gives both as possible sources, and Corominas also leaves the choice open, with Catalan as a possible route for the Italian word.^[2][3] Spanish took the verb from another Romance language, as its unchanged stressed /o/, without the diphthong ⟨ue⟩, shows.^[2] The same verb is Catalan trotar, Occitan trotar and Portuguese trotar.^[2][4]

French and Italian have it from Old High German trottôn (“to walk, go”), an intensive of tretan (“to walk”), the verb that is German treten and English tread today.^[2][5][3] Corominas notes that the double /tt/ fits only High German, so the word is not one of the Frankish words inherited by French; he suggests an early Italian loan, perhaps from Lombard, that spread with a change in horsemanship.^[2] Wiktionary and the DHLF instead posit Frankish *trottōn (“to go, run”), which Wiktionary traces to Proto-Germanic *trudōną (“to tread”) and Proto-Indo-European *dreh₂- (“to run”).^[1][5] The French verb is recorded from about 1130, the Italian one from about 1350, and the chronicler Salimbene already uses the verb in his Latin of 1281–1288.^[5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Fuero de Cáceres (1234–1275): a horseman or foot soldier who hears the call to arms and does not set out trotando o corriendo, “trotting or running”, is punished.^[7] The Libro de Alexandre (1240–1250, in a 15th-century copy) quotes a saying, cuita faze vieja trotar, “need makes an old woman trot”, and the Libro de los caballos (c. 1275) uses the verb of a horse made to run or trot.^[7][8]

Semantic evolution

Corominas finds the word in Juan Ruiz with several senses at once: “walk fast”, “run”, “dance” and “stamp one's feet”.^[2] He notes that in Catalan and Occitan too the oldest records show a hurried or laborious walk, of old women on errands or of squires on foot, as well as the horse's gait.^[2] The same idea gave Old Spanish trotero “messenger” (Berceo, Alexandre, Juan Ruiz) and Juan Ruiz's Trotaconventos, the old go-between who “trots round the convents”.^[2][9]

Nebrija gave Latin curso, cursito and succusso as its equivalents.^[10] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1739) defined it as going at a trot and, by extension, hurrying about, and repeated Ménage's derivation from Latin tolutare.^[11] The 1884 edition of the Academy's dictionary marked the sense “walk a lot or quickly” as figurative and colloquial, and the 1899 edition made riding a trotting horse a sense of its own.^[12][13] In much of the Americas and in Spain it now also means “to jog”, running long distances at a short, steady pace.^[14]

Timeline

• 1234–1275 – the Fuero de Cáceres has trotando o corriendo.^[7]
• 1240–1250 – the Libro de Alexandre (in a 15th-century copy) quotes cuita faze vieja trotar.^[7]
• c. 1275 – the Libro de los caballos uses it of horses.^[7]
• 1330–1343 – Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor, Corominas's first record, uses it with several senses and coins Trotaconventos.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija lists it with Latin curso and cursito.^[10][15]
• 1582 – first record from the Americas, of a horse in Guatemala that only trotted.^[16]
• 1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades defines the gait and the extended sense “hurry about”.^[11]
• 1899 – the Academy makes “ride a horse at a trot” a sense of its own.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, of a horse) To go at a trot.^[3][1]
2. (intransitive, of a person) To ride a horse that is trotting: Trotamos un buen rato por la orilla del río.^[3]
3. (intransitive, colloquial) To walk a great deal or hurry about from place to place.^[3][17]
4. (intransitive) To jog: to run long distances at a short, steady pace.^[14][1]

Word family

• trote
• trotacalles
• trotador
• trotamundos
• trotón
• trotaconventos

Related words

• French trotter
• Italian trottare
• English trot

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 666
3. ^ 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. trotar
4. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. trottare
5. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. trotter
6. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli, p. s.v. trottare
7. ^ 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. trotar
8. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. trotar
9. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. trotar
10. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 425
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 368
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1055
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 989
14. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. trotar
15. ^ 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. trotar
16. ^ 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. trotar
17. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. trotar