virar

Forms

virar (first-person singular present viro, first-person singular preterite viré, past participle virado)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French virer (“to turn”), with borrowed from Portuguese virar as a second source: Corominas holds that the verb is not old in Spanish but a sailors' term that came in under the joint influence of French and Portuguese.^[2][3] The French verb is recorded from the 12th century and the Portuguese one from about 1500.^[3][4] In Galician and Portuguese the verb is common in everyday speech, and the same word is Italian virare, Occitan virar and Catalan virar.^[2][1]

The common source is Vulgar Latin *virāre, whose origin is disputed.^[2][4][1] Corominas, following Thurneysen and García de Diego, considers it Celtic, comparing Welsh gwyro (“to swerve, bend aside”) and Breton goara (“to bend”); he notes that the verb is old and popular only in French, Occitan and Portuguese, the Romance languages with a strong Celtic substrate.^[2][3] The DLE follows him.^[5] The REW and the DHLF derive the verb from Latin vibrō (“to shake, brandish”), with the /b/ lost by dissimilation.^[6][4] Corominas rejects this because the Latin verb had a short /i/ and no such dissimilation is known.^[2] Others proposed that gȳrō (“to turn”) crossed with that verb or with vertō or volvō.^[7][8][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first records are Ercilla (about 1570) and García de Palacio's Instrucción náutica (1587), where a good ship is one that vira bien, “tacks well”, and the capstan bars are used quando viran, “when they heave”.^[2] A record from Mexico City of the same year defines birar as changing one's course.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The verb stayed a strictly nautical word until recently: Nebrija, Covarrubias and Cervantes's Quijote lack it.^[2] Percyvall (1591) glossed it simply “to turn”.^[10] Terreros (1786–1793) gave its two sailors' senses, heaving with the capstan and putting the ship about, with the phrase virar por avante.^[11] The senses “turn in a motor vehicle” and “tone a photographic print” reached the Academy's dictionary only in the 20th century.^[2] Alemany (1917) already had the photographic sense and Cuban senses such as “turn over” and the flogging of slaves laid face down.^[12]

In the Caribbean and the Canaries the verb became an everyday word for turning: in Cuba and Tabasco one vira a pot upside down, and in the Canaries one turns the head, turns a garment inside out or spills a liquid.^[13][14] The DLE records Cuban “set one person against another”, Cuban and Dominican virarse “turn against, change sides” and Chilean virarse “leave suddenly”.^[5][15]

Timeline

• 1470–1499 – DICCA-XV dates its first record of the verb to this period.^[16]
• 1492 – Columbus has the derivative virazón “sea breeze”, taken from Portuguese.^[2][3]
• c. 1570 – Ercilla, Corominas's first record.^[2][3]
• 1587 – García de Palacio's Instrucción náutica; a definition of birar is recorded in Mexico City the same year.^[2][9]
• 1591 – Percyvall glosses it “to turn”.^[10]
• 1817 – the Academy defines the two nautical senses.^[17]
• 1884 – the Academy derives it from Latin gyrare.^[18]
• 1925 – viraje “turn, bend” enters the Academy's dictionary.^[2][3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) Of a car or similar vehicle, to change direction, to turn.^[5][1]
2. (intransitive) To change one's ideas, interests or behaviour.^[5]
3. (intransitive, Cuba) To set one person against another.^[5]
4. (transitive, photography) To tone a print, replacing its silver salt with a more stable one or one that gives a certain colour.^[5]
5. (nautical) To tack, going from one tack to the other so that the wind comes from the opposite side: El velero viró frente al cabo.^[5][1]
6. (transitive, nautical) To turn the capstan to raise the anchors or heavy loads.^[5]
7. (reflexive, colloquial, Chile) To leave a place or back out of a commitment unexpectedly.^[5][15]
8. (reflexive, Cuba, Dominican Republic) To turn against someone or something; to change one's opinion.^[5][19]

Word family

• viraje
• revirar
• virada
• virador

Related words

• virazón
• French virer
• Portuguese virar

Usage notes

Virar por avante is to tack with the bow through the wind, and virar en redondo to turn right round, also figuratively.^[11][20] In the Canaries and the Caribbean the verb is everyday speech for turning, turning over and spilling.^[14][13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 825
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. virar
4. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. virer
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. virar
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9300
7. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 3521
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. *virare
9. ^ 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. virar
10. ^ a b Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. s.v. virar
11. ^ a b 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, 806
12. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1665
13. ^ a b Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 262
14. ^ a b Academia Canaria de la Lengua (2010), Diccionario básico de canarismos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife; online at https://www.academiacanarialengua.org, p. s.v. virar
15. ^ 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. virar
16. ^ 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. virar
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 894
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. 1092
19. ^ Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. virar
20. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. virar