criar

Forms

criar (first-person singular present crio, first-person singular preterite criei, past participle criado)^[1] Houaiss records crijar in the 13th century and cryar in the 14th.^[2] Wiktionary lists crear as an alternative spelling.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin creō (“to bring forth, beget; to make grow”), written Old Galician-Portuguese criar in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] The forms stressed on the stem were always said with /i/ (crio, crias), and the spelling of the whole verb and its family followed that pronunciation, as Nascentes explains.^[4][5]

Corominas notes that the Latin verb survived as a popular word only in the three Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula, Galician criar and Spanish criar besides this one; elsewhere, as in Italian creare, it is a learned word.^[6] In Spanish the learned crear was later set beside it, and the old verb kept the senses “to nurse, rear, educate”.^[6][7]

The Latin verb first meant “to make grow”, as in a line of Cato on a dung that “makes the grasses grow”; it goes back to Proto-Italic *krējā- and belongs with crēscō (“to grow”) and Cerēs.^[8] Wiktionary derives it from Proto-Indo-European *ḱer- (“to grow”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A Latin charter of 1054 already writes criauit te “he raised you”, and Houaiss cites a Latin criarmus of 1001.^[9][2] In the 13th-century cantigas the verb means to rear and maintain a child, as in Airas Perez Vuitoron's mocking line about raising another man's son as one's own (filho doutro que por vosso criedes); the Cantigas de Santa Maria use it for God creating the moon and the sun, for bringing up a boy and for nursing a baby at the breast.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Both the religious sense “to make from nothing” and the domestic sense “to nurse, rear” are medieval and have lasted.^[9][2] Barbosa (1611) and Bluteau (1712–1728) add the creating of magistrates and the breeding of hares by the land.^[10][11] Morais (1789) lists the raising of silkworms, birds, cattle and horses and the growing of plants, “to cause” (criar danos), “to produce” (a wound breeds pus, the head dandruff) and “to let grow” (the hair).^[12]

Modern dictionaries add the senses “to invent, conceive a work” and “to found an institution”.^[2][13] Figueiredo records a slang sense “to have money”.^[14] The verb passed into Nheengatu as yukiriari.^[1] Spanish criar means mainly “to rear”, so the Spanish verb is a false friend.^[1]

Timeline

• 1001 – a Latin criarmus.^[2]
• 1054 – criauit in a Latin charter.^[9]
• 13th century – criar in the cantigas d'escarnho and the Cantigas de Santa Maria;^[9][2] Houaiss also has crijar.^[9][2]
• 13th century – first records of criação, criado, criador, criança and criatura.^[3]
• c. 1430 – criar in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[15]
• a. 1438 – first record of recriar.^[3]
• 16th century – first record of cria “young animal still suckling”.^[3]
• 1611 – Barbosa: “to make anew”, and criar de pequeno “to bring up from childhood”.^[10]
• 1789 – Morais lists the breeding, causing and producing senses.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. To create: to bring into being from nothing.^[2][16][1]
2. To give rise to, produce, cause: A seca criou muitos problemas.^[2][17]
3. To invent, conceive (a work, a character, a method).^[2][13][1]
4. To found, set up (a school, an institution, a law).^[2][16]
5. To come to have, acquire: criar raízes, criar coragem, criar cabelos brancos.^[2][16]
6. To nurse, breastfeed; to bring up, rear (a child); to educate.^{[2][16][13][1]}
7. To breed (animals); to grow (plants).^[2][16][1]
8. (intransitive, of a wound) To fester.^[2][18]
9. (pronominal) To grow up; to be born, originate.^[2][17]

Word family

• cria
• criação
• criado
• criador
• criadouro
• criança
• criatura
• crioulo
• criativo
• malcriado
• recriar
• recriação

Related words

• procriar
• Latin creō
• Galician criar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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 Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. criar
3. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. criar
4. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. criar
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 142
6. ^ a b Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 241
7. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. criar
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b c d e f 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. criar
10. ^ a b Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. criar
11. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. criar
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, 348
13. ^ a b c 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. criar
14. ^ Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 362
15. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. criar
16. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. criar
17. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. criar
18. ^ Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 2568