carregar

Forms

carregar (first-person singular present carrego, first-person singular preterite carreguei, past participle carregado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin carricō (“to load”), formed on carrus (“wagon, cart”), and written Old Galician-Portuguese carregar in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] Cunha, Aurélio and the DLP call the Latin verb Vulgar Latin, Houaiss and Wiktionary Late Latin.^{[3][4][5][2][1]} It is found in the Visigothic laws and other texts of the Visigothic and Merovingian period with the sense “to carry, cart”, and in a Latin inscription from Africa with the sense “to load”.^[6] Old spellings are Old Galician-Portuguese caregar (1390) and Old Galician-Portuguese carreguar (15th century).^[2]

The same Latin verb is Galician carregar, Spanish cargar, Catalan carregar, French charger and Italian caricare.^[7][1] Corominas notes that Catalan and Galician-Portuguese, at the two edges of the Peninsula, kept a fuller form than the Spanish verb, which lost the vowel after ⟨rr⟩.^[6]

The Latin noun was borrowed from Gaulish *karros, from Proto-Celtic *karros (“wagon”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱr̥sós, the zero grade of *ḱers- (“to run”).^[1][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The participle already appears in a Latin text, the foro of Allariz of 1153–1157: de bestia carregada de pane aut de vini “for a beast loaded with bread or wine”.^[9] A Galician text of 1228 has the same phrase in the vernacular, De bestia carregada de pan o de uino.^[9] Machado had dated the verb to 1255 and Houaiss dates it to 1286.^[9][2] The first sense is “to load”, said of pack animals, as in the Crónica Troiana fezeron carregar suas azemelas “they had their pack mules loaded”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Cunha records the derivatives carregado and carrega “load” in the 13th century, carrego, carregação and carregador in the 14th and carregamento in the 15th;^[3] carga and cargo come from the old nouns carrega and carrego.^[3]

Morais (1789) gives the verb a wide range: to load a beast or a ship, to burden the people with heavy taxes, to load a gun with powder and ball, and to charge the enemy.^[10] Figueiredo (1899) adds “to accumulate electricity in”, “to take in the sails of a ship” and “to exaggerate”.^[11] Today it also means “to carry, take along” and, of the sky, “to darken with clouds”.^[2] In computing it means to load a program and, in Portugal, to upload a file.^[1] It can also mean to click on an element of a screen.^[12]

Timeline

• 1153–1157 – the participle carregada in the Latin foro of Allariz.^[9]
• 1228 – De bestia carregada de pan o de uino in a Galician text.^[9]
• 1255 – Machado's first date, as cited in Lorenzo's chronology.^[9]
• 1286 – Houaiss's first date.^[2]
• 1390 – the spelling caregar.^[2]
• 1518 – first occurrence in the CTA corpus, in the Espelho de Cristina.^[13]
• 1569 – Cardoso renders it with Latin onero.^[14]
• 1789 – Morais lists loading a gun and charging the enemy.^[10]
• 1899 – Figueiredo records the electrical sense.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. To load: to put a load on or into a vehicle, an animal or a ship: Carregaram o camião antes do amanhecer.^[2][4][1]
2. To carry, transport; to take along with one: carregar a mala até ao carro.^[2][4][1]
3. To weigh on; to burden or oppress, as with taxes or work.^[2][15]
4. To overdo, to put too much of something: carregar no sal; to exaggerate.^[2][15]
5. To fill or saturate;^[2] (of the sky) to grow dark with clouds.^[2]
6. To load a firearm with powder and shot.^[2][15]
7. To charge the enemy, to attack.^[15][10]
8. (electricity) To charge a battery or device.^[15][1]
9. (computing) To load a program;^[1] (Portugal) to upload.^[1]
10. (computing) To click on an element of a graphical interface.^[12]

Word family

• carga
• carrego
• carregador
• carregamento
• carregação
• descarregar
• recarregar
• sobrecarregar

Related words

• carro
• encarregar
• Latin carrus
• Spanish cargar

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. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. carregar
3. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. carro
4. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. carregar
5. ^ Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, revised online edition (2023–) of the Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa Contemporânea (2001), https://dicionario.acad-ciencias.pt, p. s.v. carregar
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 868
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1719
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. carrus
9. ^ a b c d e f g Instituto da Lingua Galega, Dicionario de dicionarios do galego medieval (DDGM), ed. Ernesto González Seoane, Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/ddgm, p. s.v. carregar
10. ^ a b c Silva, António de Morais (1789), Diccionario da lingua portugueza composto pelo padre D. Rafael Bluteau, reformado, e accrescentado, 2 vols., Lisboa: Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, p. 1, 238
11. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 257
12. ^ a b Wikcionário (Portuguese Wiktionary), pt.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. carregar
13. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. carregar
14. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. carregar
15. ^ a b c d e Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. carregar