chorar

Forms

chorar (first-person singular present choro, first-person singular preterite chorei, past participle chorado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin plōrō (“to wail, lament”), written Old Galician-Portuguese chorar in the oldest texts, with a variant Old Galician-Portuguese churar.^[2][3][1] The Latin group /pl/ at the start of a word became /tʃ/, spelt ⟨ch⟩, as in chão and chuva.^[4]

The same Latin word is Galician chorar, Spanish llorar, Catalan plorar, Occitan plorar and French pleurer, and the old Italian piorare.^[5][1] The DCECH notes that it lives on in all the Romance languages except Romanian, though modern Italian has lost it.^[6]

In Latin the verb meant to cry out with grief or pain, to wail; it was an expressive word of everyday speech, different from lacrimō (“to shed tears”), and the sense “to weep” took over in the Romance languages.^[7][8] De Vaan finds no etymology for it and weighs two ancient or modern guesses, the derivation of explōrō (“to search out”) from hunters' cries, and a dissimilation of a compound of prō and ōrō (“to plead”), which he finds unlikely;^[9][1] Wiktionary mentions a possible link with Proto-Indo-European *pleh₃(w)- (“to flow”).^[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss and Cunha date the verb to the 13th century.^[2][3] The Cantigas de Santa Maria already have it in the sense of weeping: Chorando dos ollos seus / muito “weeping greatly”, fillou-ss' a chorar “began to weep”, and as a noun, un chorar tan esquivo “such bitter weeping”.^[10] The secular cantigas pair it with the eyes in the phrase chorar destes meus olhos “to weep from these eyes of mine”.^[10][11]

Semantic evolution

Already in the medieval texts the verb took an object, “to mourn someone”: in the Crónica Troiana non poderemos chorar quantas lagrimas nos conuerra de chorar “we will not be able to weep all the tears we shall have to weep”.^[10] Morais (1789) records chorar a sua morte “to mourn his death” and vines that “weep”, shedding a watery sap; in 1813 he quotes Camões, Do cheiroso liquor que o tronco chora “of the fragrant liquor the trunk weeps”.^[12][13]

Figurative senses multiplied: instruments and the wind that “weep” with plaintive sounds, and people who complain or beg insistently.^[2][14] Brazilian Portuguese uses it for haggling over a price, and in sport for a ball that rolls round the rim or nearly goes in.^[1][15] The verb passed into the Portuguese-based creoles: Kabuverdianu txorá and Guinea-Bissau Creole tcora.^[1]

Timeline

• 13th century – chorar and churar.^[2]
• 13th century – chorando and chorar in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[10]
• 1350 – first record in the CTA prose corpus, in the Trasladação de S. Nicolau (a 14th-century witness).^[16]
• 1569 – Cardoso renders Chorar by Latin fleo and ploro.^[17]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau defines it as shedding tears.^[18]
• 1789 – Morais records weeping vines.^[12]
• 1813 – first records of chorão, choramingar and chorado.^[3]
• 1871 – Vieira explains the change of Latin pl to ch.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To weep, to cry; to shed tears: A criança chorou a noite toda.^[2][19][1]
2. To shed tears from an irritation of the eyes: Choro sempre que corto cebolas.^[2]
3. To ooze or drip; to exude a liquid: a resina que o tronco chora.^[2][20][1]
4. To mourn someone; to grieve for a loss.^[2][21]
5. To lament or regret: chorar a juventude perdida.^[2][21]
6. (figurative) To make a plaintive sound: a guitarra chorava.^[2][14]
7. To complain, to whine;^[2][1] (reflexive) to bemoan one's lot.^[2][1]
8. To beg insistently;^[2][1] (Brazil) to haggle.^[2][1]
9. (Brazil, sports) Of a ball, to roll round the rim or nearly go in.^[1][15]

Word family

• choro
• choroso
• chorão
• choramingar
• chorado

Related words

• chora
• deplorar
• implorar
• Latin plōrō
• Spanish llorar

Usage notes

Chorar lágrimas de sangue is to suffer deep grief or remorse.^[21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r 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. chorar
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. chorar
4. ^ a b Vieira, Frei Domingos (1871–1874), Grande Diccionario Portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, 5 vols., Porto: Ernesto Chardron e Bartholomeu H. de Moraes, p. 2, 214
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6606
6. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 732
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. plōrō
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. pleurer
9. ^ 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
10. ^ a b c d 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. chorar
11. ^ Universo Cantigas: Glosario da poesía medieval profana galego-portuguesa, A Coruña: Instituto da Lingua e Literatura (ILLA), Universidade da Coruña, https://www.universocantigas.gal, p. s.v. chorar1
12. ^ a b 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, 268
13. ^ Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 1, 391
14. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. chorar
15. ^ a b Wikcionário (Portuguese Wiktionary), pt.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. chorar
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. chorar
17. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. chorar
18. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. chorar
19. ^ 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. chorar
20. ^ Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. chorar
21. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 2049