vestir

Forms

vestir (first-person singular present visto, first-person singular preterite vestí, past participle vestido)^[1] Old Spanish texts also write uestir and bestir; the Cantar de mio Cid has viste and bistades.^[2][3] Asturian has vistir.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin vestīre (“to clothe, dress”), used in Spanish in every period and common to all the Romance languages.^[5][6][7][1] The same verb is Portuguese vestir, Galician vestir, Asturian vistir, Catalan vestir, Occitan vestir, French vêtir, Italian vestire and Sardinian bestire.^{[8][1][9][10]}

The Latin verb is formed on vestis (“clothes, garment”).^[11][1] That noun goes back to *westis and Proto-Indo-European *wéstis, from the root *wes- (“to be dressed”).^[12][1] The root is also found in Hittite and Luwian verbs for “to wear”, in Sanskrit verbs of the same meaning, and in Ancient Greek ἕννυμι (hénnumi, “to clothe”).^[12] wear comes from it too.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds the word in a charter of 1090 from Oelschläger's list; the BDELC dates the first record to 1080.^[5][6] The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) uses it only as a transitive verb, never as a reflexive: vistió camisa “he put on a shirt”, and of armour las lorigas vestidas “with the mail coats on”.^[3][13] The Cid also has it for “to give clothes as a gift”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose uses the verb for dressing, for clothing others (sheep clothe man with their wool) and figuratively, for being clothed in shame.^[14] The infinitive also served as a noun, el vestir “clothing”, already in the Estoria de España.^[14] Autoridades defined it as covering or adorning the body, and by extension adorning walls with tapestries or altars, covering a thing for its protection, and giving clothes as alms.^[15] The Academy added the figurative “to clothe an idea in words”, “to disguise”, the coats of animals and plants, and making clothes for someone.^[16] By 1869 it had the intransitive sense “to go dressed” in a certain way.^[17]

Proverbs and phrases include aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda “a monkey dressed in silk is still a monkey”, which Hernán Núñez already recorded, and quedarse para vestir santos, of a woman who has not married.^[18][1][4] In Venezuela and Tabasco vestir is used for lassoing a bull by the horns.^[19] In El Salvador, Chile and Argentina vestirse con ropa ajena means to take credit for another person's ideas or work.^[20]

Timeline

• 1090 – first record, in a charter; the BDELC gives 1080.^[5][6]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses vestir for clothes and armour.^[3][13]
• 1208 – the Cortes de León, the first hit in the CDH with a contemporary witness.^[13]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario has a figure uestido de loriga “dressed in mail”.^[14]
• 1513 – the first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico.^[21]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Latin vestio.^[22]
• 1817 – the Academy lists tal sastre me viste, “to make clothes for someone”.^[16]
• 1869 – the intransitive sense “to go dressed” enters the dictionary.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology, Latin vestire.^[23]

Meanings

Verb

1. To dress, clothe: to cover or adorn the body with clothes; also reflexive, to get dressed: Me vestí deprisa y salí.^[7][1]
2. To wear: Vestía un abrigo gris.^[1][24]
3. To cover something for its protection or decoration.^[7]
4. To provide someone with clothes.^[7][1]
5. To make clothes for someone.^[7][1]
6. To embellish an idea with rhetoric or secondary concepts.^[7][1]
7. To disguise the reality of something by adding ornaments.^[7][1]
8. Of grass, leaves, fur or feathers: to cover the fields, the trees or the animals.^[7]
9. (intransitive) To dress in a certain way or with a certain taste: Mi tía viste con mucha elegancia.^[7]
10. (intransitive) Of a garment, material or colour: to be elegant or suited to formal occasions.^[7][25]
11. (intransitive) To wear a particular outfit, colour or uniform: Ese día todos vestían de blanco..^[7]
12. (reflexive, rare) To get up after an illness.^[7]

Word family

• vestido
• vestidura
• vestimenta
• vestuario
• desvestir
• revestir

Related words

• investidura
• Latin vestis
• Portuguese vestir
• English vest

Usage notes

Vestir changes its stem vowel: visto, vistió, but vestimos.^[1] De vestir describes clothes or shoes kept for formal occasions.^[7]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. vestir
3. ^ a b c d Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. s.v. vestir
4. ^ 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. vistir
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 795
6. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. vestir
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. vestir
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. vestire
9. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 3500
10. ^ 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, 212
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ 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. vestir
14. ^ a b c 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), p. s.v. vestir
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 469
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 888
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 790
18. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 1155
19. ^ Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 343
20. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. vestir
21. ^ 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. vestir
22. ^ Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1382
23. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1085
24. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. vestir
25. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. vestir