rogar

Forms

rogar (first-person singular present rogo, first-person singular preterite roguei, past participle rogado)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rogō (“to ask; to request”), written Old Galician-Portuguese rogar in the oldest texts.^[2][3][1] Corominas counts it among the words kept as popular words only in the peripheral Romance languages, Portuguese among them.^[4] Nascentes instead calls it a learned borrowing.^[5] The same Latin verb is Galician rogar, Spanish rogar, Catalan rogar, Old French rover, Italian rogare and Romanian ruga.^[6][1]

De Vaan derives the Latin verb from a noun or adjective Proto-Indo-European *h₃roǵ-o- (“stretching”), that is, the arms stretched out in begging, the base also of rogus (“funeral pile”), and compares Old Norse rakr (“straight”).^[7] Wiktionary agrees and makes it a doublet of regō, but also gives the alternative of a doublet of precor (“to pray”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss's earliest dates (1003 rogou, 1004) are from Latin charters.^[2] Cunha dates the Portuguese verb to the 13th century.^[2][3] In the cantigas it means “to ask earnestly, to beg”, with the person in the dative or the accusative: the Cantigas de Santa Maria have rogo-lle que me queira por seu / Trobador “I beg her to take me as her troubadour”, and Afonso X wrote pois me rogades / que vos dia meu conselho “since you ask me to give you my counsel”.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau (1712) defines the verb as asking for something as a favour and lists rogar a Deos “to pray to God”.^[11] Morais (1813) adds rogar pragas “to call down curses” and fazer-se de rogar “to make oneself be begged”, refusing at first what one is asked.^[12] In northern Portugal the verb also means to hire workers for farm work, a sense Meyer-Lübke already noted, and dialect surveys record “to invite to a wedding or feast” and “to offer”.^{[13][14][6][15]}

Timeline

• 1003–1004 – rogou and other forms in Latin charters.^[2]
• 13th century – first Portuguese records, in the cantigas.^[3][9]
• 1416 – first record in the corpus of old Portuguese prose, in the Vida do Cativo Monge Confesso.^[16]
• 1569 – Cardoso renders it with Latin oro and precor.^[17]
• 1813 – Morais records rogar pragas and fazer-se de rogar.^[12]
• 1912 – Silva Bastos records the northern sense “to hire for farm work”.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To ask humbly and insistently; to beg, implore: Rogou ao juiz que o ouvisse.^[2][18][1]
2. (intransitive, with por) To pray or plead for someone or something: rogar pelos doentes.^[2][19][1]
3. To urge, exhort: Os médicos rogaram à população que ficasse em casa.^[2][18]
4. (with pragas) To curse, call down curses on someone.^[20][21][1]
5. (Portugal, regional) To hire workers for farm work.^[22][14][13]

Word family

• rogo
• rogador
• rogativa
• rogante

Related words

• irrogar
• sub-rogar
• rogatório
• rogação
• Latin rogō
• Spanish rogar

Usage notes

Fazer-se rogar or fazer-se rogado means to make others ask many times before agreeing.^[19][22] The proverb quando Deus não quer, santos não rogam “when God does not want it, the saints do not intercede” says that pleading is useless against a higher will.^[19]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. rogar
3. ^ a b c Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. rogar
4. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 49
5. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. rogar
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7361
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. rogo
9. ^ a b 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. rogar
10. ^ 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. rogar
11. ^ Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. rogar
12. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 39
13. ^ a b c Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. rogar
14. ^ a b Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 8157
15. ^ Instituto da Lingua Galega, Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (TLPGP), Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/tesouro, p. s.v. rogar
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. rogar
17. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. rogar
18. ^ a b Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. rogar
19. ^ a b c Aulete, Francisco Júlio Caldas, Dicionário contemporâneo da língua portuguesa (1st ed. 1881), online as Aulete Digital, Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, https://aulete.com.br, p. s.v. rogar
20. ^ Michaelis: Moderno Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, São Paulo: Melhoramentos (online as Michaelis Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa, https://michaelis.uol.com.br), p. s.v. rogar
21. ^ 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. rogar
22. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. rogar