vejar

Forms

vejar (first-person singular present vejo, first-person singular preterite vejé, past participle vejado)^[1] Older spelling vexar, the headword of the Diccionario de Autoridades; the Academy's 1817 edition spells it vejar.^[2][3] A variant avejar is also recorded.^[4]

Etymology

It is a learned borrowing, borrowed from Latin vexō (“to shake violently; to ill-treat”).^[4][5][6][1] Corominas notes that the word is learned in the other Romance languages as well.^[4] The same Latin verb gave Catalan vexar, Portuguese vexar, French vexer and Italian vessare.^[7][8][9]

The Latin verb is traditionally linked with vehō (“to carry”), as a frequentative of it.^[10] De Vaan considers it a simple iterative built on a participle *vexus (“moved”), also found in convexus and dēvexus, or else an s-present from the same root, independent of those adjectives.^[11] Gómez de Silva and Bénaben derive it from Proto-Indo-European *weǵʰ- (“to go, carry”), extended with -s-.^[12][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

Berceo may already have used vexar once, as a noun opposed to plazer “pleasure”, in the Martirio de San Lorenzo: faziénli a Laurencio placer más que vexar “they gave Lawrence pleasure rather than torment”.^[4][14] That text is known only from an 18th-century copy, and Corominas puts a question mark beside it.^[14][4] The first sure record is a law of 1531 in the Nueva Recopilación, quoted by Autoridades: subjects son vexados, y fatigados “are harassed and wearied” by lawsuits brought before the royal courts.^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

Corominas finds the verb in the classical authors and in modern use, but only as a literary word.^[4] Palencia (1490) uses ser vexado only while defining the Latin verb, which makes Corominas doubt that it was a real Castilian word for him.^[4] In the Americas the verb appears from 1563, mostly for the ill-treatment of the indigenous population.^[15]

Autoridades already gives the two senses of today: to ill-treat, harass or make someone suffer, and to give a vejamen, a satirical and playful reprimand.^[2][6] Moliner stresses the humiliation the ill-treated person feels.^[16]

Timeline

• a1264 – a possible first use as a noun, vexar, in Berceo's Martirio de San Lorenzo (in an 18th-century copy).^[14][4]
• 1415 – the first record in DICCA-XV's 15th-century Aragonese texts.^[17]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary renders Latin uexo by fatigar.^[17]
• 1531 – a law of the Nueva Recopilación uses vexados.^[4][5]
• 1563 – first record in the Americas, in Yucatán.^[15]
• 1739 – Autoridades enters vexar with both modern senses.^[2]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary spells it vejar.^[3]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the Latin etymology for the first time.^[18]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To mistreat, harass or humiliate someone; to make someone suffer: Los carceleros vejaban a los detenidos.^[6][1][16]
2. (transitive) To give someone a vejamen, a satirical, joking reprimand.^[6][16]

Word family

• vejación
• vejamen
• vejatorio
• vejador

Related words

• Latin vexō
• Catalan vexar

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 471
3. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 880
4. ^ 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, 757
5. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. vejar
6. ^ a b c d 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. vejar
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. vexāre
8. ^ 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. 9, 250
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. vexer
10. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. vejar
13. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. vejar
14. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. vejar
15. ^ 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. vejar
16. ^ a b c Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. vejar
17. ^ 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. vejar
18. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1075