volver

Forms

volver (first-person singular present vuelvo, first-person singular preterite volví, past participle vuelto)^[1] The usual spelling from the Middle Ages to the Golden Age was bolver, by a normal Castilian dissimilation; the Academy imposed the Latinising volver in the 18th century.^[2] A popular pronunciation golver, due to stressed forms such as güelve, is heard in most Spanish-speaking countries.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish bolver, inherited from Latin volvō (“to roll, make go round”).^[2][3][4][1] The Latin verb meant “to make roll”, “to make go back and forth”, “to roll up” and “to unroll”.^[2][4]

Spanish alone kept it fully into modern times; most of the western Romance languages show only traces of it in the Middle Ages, but Portuguese volver and Italian volgere survive as literary words.^[2] Old Catalan vogir “to go round” is related.^[2][5] The Italian form, with /g/, is explained by analogy with a vulgar *volgō.^[2]

The Latin verb goes back to *welwō, from Proto-Indo-European *welH- (“to turn, wind”); de Vaan reconstructs a stem *uel-u- (“to wind”).^[1][6] Its cognates include Ancient Greek εἰλύω (eilúō, “to wrap round”) and Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌻𐍅𐌾𐌰𐌽 (walwjan, “to roll”).^[6][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140) has the verb in the spelling bolver.^[2][3] There it already has the basic sense “to turn something over, turn it from side to side”, as well as “to stir up (a quarrel or battle)”.^[2][8] The Cid says ¡Esto me an buelto mios enemigos malos!, “my wicked enemies have plotted this against me”.^[9][8]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used the verb in many senses: “to start (a fight)”, “to mix”, “to stir up” and, reflexively, “to get entangled”, which Juan Ruiz uses as an erotic euphemism.^[2][8] The basic sense “to turn” was the commonest from the start; the intransitive “to come back, return” is later, and is clear in Nebrija.^[2] Autoridades (1739) records “to direct”, “to return” and many other senses, and the Academy's 19th-century editions list, among others, “to translate”, “to restore” and “to vomit”.^[10][11]

Several senses have since become old-fashioned; in Argentina and elsewhere in America “to turn over” is now expressed by dar vuelta.^[2] In the Quijote the verb already meant “to translate” and “to turn into” (ha vuelto estos gigantes en molinos).^[12] Cervantes also speaks of books that le han vuelto el juicio, “have turned his head”.^[12] With a and an infinitive it means “to do again”, and as volverse it means “to become”.^[1][13]

Timeline

• 1074 – the noun volta (modern vuelta) appears in a charter.^[2][3]
• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has bolver.^[2]
• c. 1140 – first record of envolver.^[3]
• 1220–1250 – first record of revolver.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija glosses bolver de lugar do fueste with Latin redeo and revertor, the first clear record of “to return”.^[2]
• 1525 – first record in the Americas, in Tierra Firme: que volviesen lo que habían llevado.^[14]
• 1612 – first record of devolver.^[3]
• 1739 – Autoridades enters the word under volver, while its prologue notes that most people and printers spell it with b-.^[2]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary first gives the etymology.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To turn something, give it a turn or turns: Volvió la llave dos veces.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To repay, return a favour.^[4]
3. (transitive) To direct or turn something towards something else, literally or figuratively: volver la vista.^[4][13]
4. (transitive) To translate (traducir).^[4]
5. (transitive) To give back (devolver).^[4]
6. (transitive) To put someone or something back in their former state.^[4]
7. (transitive, mostly reflexive) To turn someone or something into something else;^[4][1] volverse, to become: Se volvió muy desconfiado.^[4][1]
8. (transitive) To turn something inside out or the other way round, and to remake a garment with the reverse of the cloth outside.^[4]
9. (transitive) To vomit (vomitar).^[4]
10. (transitive, mostly reflexive) To make someone change their mind.^[4]
11. (transitive) To give change after a payment.^[4]
12. (transitive) To swing a door or window shut or ajar.^[4]
13. (intransitive, also reflexive) To return, go or come back to where one started: Volvieron a casa de madrugada.^[13][1]
14. (intransitive, with a and an infinitive) To do something again: volvió a llamar.^[1][16]

Word family

• vuelta
• vuelto
• volvedor
• volvible
• devolver
• envolver
• revolver
• desenvolver

Related words

• revolcar
• volcar
• voltear
• voluble
• volumen
• revolución
• Latin volvō
• Portuguese volver

Usage notes

Set phrases include volver en sí “to come round”, volverse atrás “to go back on one's word” and volver loco a alguien “to drive someone mad”.^[4] The verb is irregular (vuelvo, vuelto); its past participle gave the noun vuelto, “change” in much of Spanish America.^[1][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 839
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. volver
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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. volver
5. ^ 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, 339
6. ^ 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, p. s.v. volvō
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. uoluō
8. ^ a b c Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 80
9. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. volver
10. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 519
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 751
12. ^ a b 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. 1166
13. ^ a b c Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. volver
14. ^ 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. golver
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1098
16. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. volver