saltar

Forms

saltar (first-person singular present salto, first-person singular preterite saltei, past participle saltado)^[1] Houaiss records the 15th-century spellings ssaltou and salltar.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin saltō (“to dance; to jump”), written Old Galician-Portuguese saltar in the oldest texts.^[2][1][3][4] The Latin verb is a frequentative of saliō (“to jump, leap”).^[5][6] In classical Latin it meant above all “to dance, perform a pantomime”, and the DHLF notes that it took the sense “to jump” in Late Latin.^[5][7][2]

The same Latin verb is Galician saltar, Spanish saltar, Catalan saltar, Occitan sautar, French sauter, Italian saltare and Romanian sălta.^[8][1] The old sense “to dance” lives on in Old Spanish sotar and in Aragonese jota (“a dance”).^[8][9] García de Diego derives the Galician choutar (“to jump”), with its palatal initial, rather from exsultō.^[9]

De Vaan traces the Latin verb to Proto-Indo-European *sh₂l-ie/o- (“to jump”), with Ancient Greek ἅλλομαι (hállomai, “to jump”) as a cognate.^[10] Wiktionary calls the origin uncertain, since such a form ought to have given a Latin stem with ⟨o⟩.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo's chronology finds the verb in the Cantigas de Santa Maria of the 13th century, earlier than Machado's 14th-century record: e ar quero que saltedes / de cima daquela pena “and I also want you to jump from the top of that rock”.^[4] Another cantiga has a man who meant to leap e se lançar … no batel “and throw himself into the boat”.^[4] The Crónica Troiana has the proverb quen gran salto quer saltar de longe deue correr “whoever wants to make a great jump must run from far off”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The medieval verb already meant to jump down, across and into; the Dicionário de Alcobaça uses it to translate Latin desilio, insilio, resilio and salio.^[4] Bluteau (1712–1728) defines it as lifting the body from the ground with agility and lists saltar com prazer “to jump for joy”, saltar àlem and saltar fóra.^[11]

Morais (1789) adds “to go ashore” (saltar em terra), of the wind “to shift suddenly”, saltar com alguém “to fall upon someone”, “to pass from one subject to another without transition”, of a rash “to break out”, and, transitively, to leap over a wall and to leave words out in reading or writing.^[12] “To skip, omit” is today chiefly European.^[1][13] Modern dictionaries add a bouncing ball, a heart that pounds, blood that spurts, and something that stands out, “jumps to the eye”.^[14][15]

Timeline

• 13th century – saltedes and saltar in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[4]
• c. 1430 – saltar in the Horto do Esposo (witness 1390–1437), its first occurrence in the CTA corpus.^[16]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses saltar with Latin salio and saltito.^[17]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau lists saltar com prazer, saltar àlem and saltar fóra.^[11]
• 1789 – Morais records saltar em terra “to go ashore” and the sense “to leave out (words)”.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. To jump, leap: to lift oneself off the ground with an effort: As crianças saltavam no pátio.^[2][18][1]
2. To jump from one place to another; to clear (a distance or an obstacle) with a jump: saltar a vala.^[2][13]
3. To throw oneself (into a place); to jump down: Saltou do barco para o cais.^[2][18]
4. To get down quickly from a vehicle or an animal; to go ashore, disembark.^[14][15]
5. To bounce (of a ball).^[2][15]
6. To spurt, gush out (of blood, tears); to beat wildly (of the heart).^[14][15]
7. To change suddenly (of the wind); to rise suddenly from one rank or value to another.^[14][1]
8. To attack, fall upon someone.^[14]
9. (chiefly Portugal) To skip, leave out, omit: saltar uma página.^[1][13]
10. (figurative) To stand out, be evident.^[1][15]

Word family

• saltador
• saltante
• saltão
• salta-pocinhas
• salta-martim

Related words

• sair
• salto
• Latin saltō
• Galician saltar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. saltar
3. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. saltar
4. ^ 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. saltar
5. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. saltō
6. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. saltar
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. sauter
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7551
9. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. saltare
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. saltar
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. 2, 370
13. ^ a b c Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. saltar
14. ^ a b c d e Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. saltar
15. ^ a b c d e 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. saltar
16. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. saltar
17. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. saltar
18. ^ a b 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. saltar