University of Pennsylvania Press Hispanic Review

The Etymology of Hispano-Romance Tomar 'To Take'
Author(s): Thomas J. Walsh

Source: Hispanic Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Summer, 2000), pp. 243-265
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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THE ETYMOLOGY OF HISPANO-ROMANCE TOMAR 'TO TAKE'
THOMAS J. WALSH
Georgetown University
Tra i vocaboli che ogni cultore prudente

della filologia neolatina deve rassegnarsi-
ponderato che abbia le proposte messe
avanti fin qui-a dichiarare di etimologia
oscura, I sicuramente da porre lo spag-
nuolo e portoghese tomar ...
Pio Rajna, 1919
F the forty most frequently

Oj* Spanish (Juilland and Chan
olE
a* only one defies easy associati
and amply recorded Classica
the sources of the others are so transparent as
59 m~ never to have provoked a hint of scholarly con-
troversy. The resister is tomar 'to take,' a form
unknown outside the confines of Hispano-Romance, here narrowly
defined to exclude Catalan, which-like most other Romance
varieties--derives its verb 'to take' from Lat. PREHENDERE 'to seize,
grasp.' While distinguished Hispanists and Romanists, including
some of the giants of the field, have tried out a variety of solutions,
Joan Corominas, as recently as 1980, labeled tomar "de origen in-
cierto" (Diccionario2 s.v. tomar.) In the pages to follow, I shall argue
that tomar is cognate to Sp./Port. domar < Lat. DOMA-E 'to tame,' and
that its initial voiceless stop resulted from operation of an over-
looked "sound law." I shall suggest further that the semantic devel-
opment 'to tame' > 'to take' represents a generalization of semantic
243
244 Thomas J. Walsh HR 68 (2000)
elements already present in DOMARE at the

forth my own solution, however, I believe
briefly earlier attempts, mostly by majo
enigma of tomar. 1
Friedrich Diez viewed tomar as a borrow
Old Saxon t6mian 'to set free,' a solution
editions of his Romance etymological dic
Franz Settegast proposed derivation fro
row,' an idea that, while appealing on semant
justify phonetically.
Hugo Schuchardt, who ignored Settegas
ing Diez for excessive reliance on German
the same onomatopoeic or expressive base
Sp. tumbar(se) 'to knock (lie) down' and F
Paris, whose reaction to Settegast's pro
133) was expressed only by a question ma
suggestion, though without a ringing en
1890).
Wilhelm Meyer-Liibke (Romanisches, s.v.), following Schu-
chardt, posited an onomatopoeic [*]tum(b) 'fall, flop' to account for
a range of words, mostly exhibiting meanings reminiscent of 'to fall,'
in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French, Italian and Rumanian.2 For
him, Settegast's derivation from MUTUARE ranked as "ganz unwahr-
scheinlich."
The Florentine literary scholar Pio Rajna unearthed an apparently
infrequent Latin verb, AUTUMA-E 'to say, affirm, reckon, judge,' which
would have evolved regularly into Late Spoken Latin *atomare. To
explain loss of a- in Spanish, he invoked numerous instances, in Old
and Modem Spanish, of verbs exhibiting variants both with and
without a- (e.g., [a]bajar, [a]bastar, [a]catar, [a]coger, [a]cometer,
[a]dormirse, [a]guisar, and [a]quejarse).
Jakob Jud espoused Rajna's idea wholeheartedly, responding to
potential criticisms raised by Rajna himself, while also contributing
several new arguments in favor. To explain nonattestation of *ato-
1 For a more detailed and elaborate historique du probleme, see Malkiel, "Les
avatars."
2 Meyer-Liibke repeated this solution in substantially similar form in the third
edition of his Romance etymological dictionary.
Etymology of Tomar 245
mar, he observed that while speakers would sure

as a prefix, they would have been at a loss to ass
any known lexical base. As a parallel, he cited Pro
'to recover, charge, collect' < RECUPER-E (cf. non
alongside two additional analogous cases from La
Romance. Finally, Jud, who believed that AUTUMA
legal term, adduced several other Latin lexemes
same semantic sphere that had survived exclusively in Hispano-
Romance.
Leo Spitzer, who dismissed the solution based on AUTUMARE

"tout a fait fantaisiste," was troubled by the absence of cogna
outside the Iberian peninsula. He was also skeptical of the appar
semantic development from abstract ('to say, affirm, reckon, ju
to concrete ('to take'), which ran counter to observable trends.
sided squarely with Schuchardt and Meyer-Liibke in preferrin
onomatopoeic solution.
Vicente Garcia de Diego, though aware of Meyer-Liibke's and
Rajna's proposals, embraced Settegast's solution (Diccionario
MUTUARE), believing that "la perfecta congruencia semaintica
muy probable esta etimologia." Though his enthusiasm had evide
waned by the time of publication of the second edition of his e
mological dictionary three decades later, he continued to list t
under the lemma MUTUARE.
Corominas, in both editions of his Spanish etymological dictio-
nary (s.v. tomar), reported that informed scholars were divided into
two camps as regards the origin of tomar: followers of Schuchardt,
Meyer-Liibke, and Spitzer, who favored the onomatopoeic solution,
vs. defenders of Rajna and Jud, who championed derivation from
AUTUMARE. A substantial portion of Corominas' four-and-a-half-page
dictionary entry for tomar is devoted to a withering-and, in my
judgment, conclusive- critique of the onomatopoeic solution.3 In his
view, Sp. tumbar, Fr. tomber, and their Romance congeners, be-
longed to an entirely different lexical family from tomar. Among his
most convincing arguments were the following: 1) Words belonging
to the former group (i.e., those signifying 'to fall, knock down') show
-mb- in all languages and dialects save those in which that cluster
3 Malkiel also found Corominas' arguments against the onomatopoeic solution

"entierement convaincants."
yielded -m- by regular phonetic change

retain -mb- in this lexeme), whereas toma
such varieties as Portuguese and Leonese
-mb- (cf. Port. lombo/pombo and Leon. lo
palomo < Lat. LUMBU 'loin'/PALUMBU 'woo
of the onomatopoeic solution has explaine
jectory 'to fall, knock down' > 'to take.'4
Corominas insisted that AUTUMARE was n
edly in the writings of Plautus, Terence,
Fathers.5 While observing that it was not un
in Archaic and Late Latin to endure in Hi
theless conceded that conclusive proof for
AUTUMARE Was wanting. Finally, picking u
AUTITMARE as a legal term, Corominas note
in legal texts in early Old Spanish.6 That
him that tomar continued AUTUMARE 'to affirm' in the sense of 'to
proclaim one's right to an object.'
The problem of tomar occupied the attention of Yakov Malkiel,
who called it "one of the major issues of Romance etymology," twice
in the mid-1970s. On the first occasion ("Deux categories" 264f.),
after positing a blend of AUTUMARE and AESTUMARE 'to appraise, esti-
mate' as source of OSp. asmar/osmar 'to estimate, reckon,' he
suggested that "un retour a *tomjan (la base presque abandonn6e de
Diez...) s'impose d'une maniere ineluctable." By the time of his
second piece ("Contacts" 115-7), Malkiel had come to view Diez'
solution as a "blind alley," preferring then to derive tomar from
AESTUMARE. In his view, speakers could, through a folk etymology,
4 Spitzer attempted such an explanation, but Corominas showed that the Catalan
evidence constituting a crucial link in Spitzer's argument was faulty.
5According to the eminent Latinist Alfred Ernout, AUTUMARE had fallen out of
usage by Imperial times, when it was artificially resuscitated by certain erudite
authors.
" I believe Corominas exaggerated this point by declaring use of tomar in legal
texts "piedra angular del problema." Since a high percentage of early Old Spanish texts
are legal documents, it is only natural that many instances of tomar should come from
those documents. Moreover, since many such documents addressed a) punishments
meted out for taking what rightly belonged to another, and b) objects, pieces of land,
or sums of money to be taken by offended parties in compensation for some unjus-
tifiable loss or offense, one expects a verb meaning 'to take' to occur with some
frequency.
have linked AES- with the homophonous Latin w

bronze, money, payment, reward, wages,' an ass
cording to him, "would clearly have stimulated
certain autonomy to *-TUMARE and to endow it w
kiel did not rule out a subsequent blend with AUT
meaning 'to believe' by certain late and Christian
reconciling his hypothesis with the thinking of R
Giovan Battista Pellegrini wondered about a possible link to
isolated Friulan tomdt, which may have signified 'preselected
spouse' or "officially announced fiance" (255).
With a single exception (MUTUARE), all the proposed etyma share,
in my opinion, an irremediable shortcoming: their meanings bear
little if any similarity to the semantic profile of tomar. Goth. *t6mjan,
if it existed, denoted 'to set free,' i.e. the opposite of tomar. Tumbar
and its congeners invariably signify 'to fall,' 'to lie down,' and 'to
somersault.' Both AESTUM RE and AUTUMARE denoted intellectual oper-
ations or verbal actions. The two attempts that have been made to
establish a semantic link between AESTUMRE and AUTUMARE seem
strained and farfetched (Corominas, Diccionario,,2 s.v. tomar; M

kiel, "Contacts" 117). Finally, derivation from MUTUARE, whose mea
ing ('to borrow') is compatible with tomar's, requires assumptio
a highly unusual, perhaps unprecedented, metathesis of initial
final phonemes of a monosyllabic verbal stem. In short, Coromin
was right to call tomar "de origen incierto."
Before setting out to prove that tomar ultimately echoes DOM
let us review briefly the Classical Latin family of DOMME and it
Romance progeny.8 Fully regular in the present system, DOMARE
hibited an archaic perfect DOMUI, along with a rhizotonic past pa
ciple DOMITU, forms more more compatible with the Classical L
third than with the first conjugation. Predictably enough, regula
Absence of reflexes of AES from all Romance languages suggests that it had fal
into desuetude before the emergence of Proto-Romance, whose speakers, unfam
with that word, could not have hit upon the suggested folk etymology. Consequen
the sequence of events hypothesized by Malkiel would have had to predate by a
substantial margin the fragmentation of Proto-Romance into the various branches, a
chronology that raises the question why reflexes of *-TUMkRE fail to turn up in other
Romance varieties.
8 Contrary to appearances, DOMARE was unrelated to the Latin family of DO
'house' (Benveniste).
DOMAUI and DOMATU also turn up in pos

widely reported and discussed by grammarians (Thesaurus s.v.
DOMO). The base verb was flanked by DOMITARE, which, despite fre-
quentative origin, differed little if at all in meaning from DOMARE.
Prefixal derivatives in CON-, DE-, E-, PER-, PRAE-, RE- and SUB- are on
record, each supported by a mere handful of examples. The deriva-
tives share the meaning of DOMARE, occasionally with added nuances,
e.g. PERDOMARE 'to crunch or knead flour, to break up soil thoroughly.'
Finally, agentive DOMITOR/-TRIX 'tamer' and nomen actionis DOMITURA 'a
taming' are also attested.
Descendants of DOMARE or DOMITARE characterize all Romance
languages save Rumanian. In Sardinian, domare occurs in docu-
ments (condaghe) predating the period of Spanish domination, a fact
which rules out borrowing from Hispano-Romance (Atzori s.v.
domare). All major modern dialects show reflexes of DOMARE, with
the expected phonetic adjustments (e.g., Campid. domai), alongside
deverbal dama 'a taming' (Atzori; Wagner). Standard Italian also
preserves domare, while such northern dialects as Genoese,
Milanese, Piedmontese, Romagnolo, Trentino, and Venetian all show
appropriately evolved descendants, usually domar, doma', or dome.9
Cognates of domare also turn up in Umbrian and Sicilian dialects.1'
In Gallo-Romance, DOMITARE prevailed, as witness Fr. dompter < OFr.
donter, alongside Occ. dondar < OPr. domdar. 11 While domar is the
standard form in modern Catalan, domdar, current to this day in
Roussillon and the Plana de Vic, was both earlier and more frequent
in the medieval tongue (Corominas, Diccionari s.v. domar). Sp.
domar, dated by Corominas to the eleventh century (Diccionariol,2
s.v. domar), was used by Berceo and Juan Ruiz and cited by Nebrija
(s.v. domar). Portuguese presents a similar picture, with domar in
common use throughout the history of the language.
While none of the Latin prefixed variants of DOMARE cited above is
known to have survived the fall of the Empire, the Romance lan-
guages provide more than enough evidence-drawn mainly from
southern Italy, southern France, and the Iberian peninsula-to sup-
port postulation of Proto-Romance *ADDOMA-E/*ADDOMITARE. Whereas
9 Azzolini; Brero; Casaccia; Cherubini; Mattioli; Nazari; Ponza; Zanette.

10 Moretti; Mortillaro; Piccitto.
1 Alibert; Levy; Mistral; Wartburg s.v. DOMITARE.
in Umbria adom6 alternates with dom6; (Moretti

southern Italy the prefixed form is by far the m
witness Neap. addum(m)d&, Bar. addomad, Sal.
domitari, and Sic. addummari. 12 Old Provengal
with domdar, a state of affairs perpetuated in
Alcover/Moll include adomar as a near-synonym
comprehensive dictionary, while a glance at Grie
(map #657) shows adomar as especially vigorous
and central Catalonia and in Valencia. The Alcover
also contains an entry for adondar, noting its occ
lona, Empordh (northeast of Barcelona), Vimbod
gona), and the Balearic Islands. According to Alco
used reflexively adondar-se signifies 'acomodar-s
cosa que abans era molestosa o dificil.' (As an example, they cite
"adondar-se al treball.") Griera (map #657) records adondar in north-
western Catalonia, in alternation with adomar. A variety of authors
confirm the existence of adomar in Aragonese.14 Turning to Luso-
Romance, we find adomar, documented in fifteenth-century Portu-
guese (Cunha s.v. adomar), still current as a synonym of domar in
Brazil (Bueno and Morais Silva), where it may also, like Cat.
adondar, denote 'to accustom, resign oneself' when used reflexively
(Costa). Finally, adomar is attested in Leonese dialects (Fernmndez
Gonzalez 193; Miguelez Rodriguez 17), in at least two Cantabrian
varieties (Penny, Estudio 127, El habla 226), and also turns up
sporadically in various points of central and northern Colombia
(Atlas map #14).15 To sum up, reflexes of *ADDOMARiE/*ADDOMITARE are
widely documented in Italo-, Gallo-, and Hispano-Romance. In each
of those Romance domains, it is precisely the more archaic regions
that perpetuate the prefixed forms, a pattern that lends further
credence to the reconstruction.
12 Barracano; D'Ambra; D'Ascoli; Giarrizzo; Piccitto; Rohlfs Dizionario and

cabolario; Salzano.
3IAlibert (s.v. adondar); Levy (s.v. adomdar); Mistral (s.v. adounda). Wartb
(S.V. DOMITATRE) reported one instance of adomter from fifteenth-century French
addition to a similarly structured dialect variant from modern Walloon.
14 Andolz; Aragii's; Rohlfs; Badia Margarit (220).
15 Though adomar in lieu of domar may well exist in other Spanish Americ
dialects, unavailability of atlases with maps listing words for 'to tame' in other L
American countries makes this difficult to verify.
I contend that tomar is the Hispano-Rom

DOMAE, reflecting 1) devoicing of -DD-, a
presently-also affected other verbs in the transition from Late
Spoken Latin to Old Spanish, and 2) suppression of A-, a prefix that
had become all but meaningless in Late Spoken Latin. After address-
ing those formal issues, we shall proceed to discuss conditions that
caused a verb denoting 'to tame' to acquire the far more general-
and at first glance unrelated-meaning 'to take.'
To understand how a Latin voiced geminate could have produced
a simple voiceless stop, we must review briefly the chronology of
Romance lenition in the Iberian peninsula. Most specialists agree
that the first step in that complex process was spirantization of
intervocalic voiced stops ([bdg] > [0Py]), soon followed by voicing
of the originally voiceless series ([ptk] > [bdg] in the same context.
In a paper published in 1991 ("The Demise"), I argued that a second
round of spirantization, which transmuted the voiced stop allo-
phones of the Latin voiceless series into voiced spirants (e.g., UITA
'life' > [vida] > [vi8a]), leading to their merger with the voiced
spirant allophones of the Latin voiced stops, occurred at the
beginning-rather than at the end- of the Middle Ages (Walsh, "The
Demise"). In my judgment, that second round of spirantization,
which eliminated from the phonetic level all intervocalic simple
voiced stops, compelled speakers to reanalyze the geminates as
simple stops in Hispano-Romance.
After completion of the second round of spirantization, but prior
to geminate reduction, Hispano-Romance would have exhibited, as
reflexes of the Latin stops in intervocalic position, only voiceless and
voiced geminates and voiced spirants. In the paper just cited, I
argued that this state of affairs effectively mandated speakers'
reanalysis of the Latin geminates as simple stops since, without
the original simple stops (now all spirants) to contrast with, the
erstwhile geminates could no longer be analyzed as such. This is
true because phonological quantity- unlike, say, voicing or
continuancy-is a relative feature. Whereas voicing or continuancy
are either present or absent in any given segment, quantity is purely
relative. Regardless of how measurably long a consonant may be,
speakers cannot analyze it as phonemically long unless it contrasts
with a shorter counterpart. The second round of spirantization elim-
inated those short counterparts of the intervocalic geminate stops by
making them spirants.
Reinterpretation of the Latin voiceless gemina

clusively in intervocalic position) as simple voice
forth identified phonemically with the initial an
simple voiceless stops) was predictable and straig
ysis of the rare voiced geminates was, by contra
clear-cut. Speakers faced three choices. They could
phonetic simple voiced stops, thereby creating a
alongside the voiceless stops (from earlier voicele
voiced spirants (from underlying voiced stops). T
highly unlikely since it would have entailed the
series of phonemes with an extremely low freque
The other two options involved reassignment to t
voiced stop phonemes, realized phonetically in in
as voiceless stops and voiced spirants, respectively. The choice
might well have turned on whether speakers, upon hearing a pho-
netic voiced stop, focused more on the voicing or the occlusion. In
the former case, reassignment to the voiced stop phoneme would
ensue, leading to spirantization at the phonetic level. That this solu-
tion was implemented in certain instances, no doubt the majority, is
proved by such modern Spanish words as abad 'abbot' < ABBATE,
aducir 'to adduce' < ADDUCERE, and agravar 'to weigh down' <
AGGRAUARE, all of whose Latin forerunners contained voiced gemi-
nates, pronounced today as simple voiced spirants.
Nevertheless, strong evidence exists to suggest that speakers also
experimented with the third option, namely identification and
merger with the voiceless stop phonemes. The evidence at issue
involves two well documented Old Spanish verbs, namely atormecer
'to fall asleep' < ADDORMISCERE (or OBDORMISCERE), first recorded in the
mid-fourteenth century and cited by Nebrija (s.v. atormecerse) (see
Corominas, Diccionariol,2 s.v. dormir), and Sp. aturar 'to last, make
last, persevere, endure' < OBDURARE or *ADDURARE (cf. It. addurare), in
common use as early as Berceo and continuing through the seven-
teenth century.16 I have also argued in a recent paper (forthcoming)
that Sp./Port aterir(se) 'to be stiff or numb with cold' and atere-
cer(se) 'to become stiff or numb with cold' can be shown to derive,
16 Cejador; Corominas, Diccionario2 s.v. durar; Alonso Pedraz s.v. aturar. Mo-
liner (s.v.) reports that aturar persists in Aragon and Salamanca, while Corominas
(Diccionario, s.v. dormir) adduced several cases of-DD- > -t- from Catalan.
respectively, from Lat. *ADDERIGERE and *AD

ants of recorded DERIGERE 'to be stiff or numb with cold' and DERI-
GESCERE 'to become stiff or numb with cold,' via operation of tha
same phonological rule.
In short, if ADDORMISCERE, *ADDURRAE, and *ADDERIGERE had come to
be pronounced [atormests'r], [aturar], and [aterests'r], respectivel
in Proto-Hispano-Romance, then it seems reasonable to suppose tha
*ADDOMMAE could have evolved to [atomar]. In the cases of ADDORMIS-
CERE and *ADDURAJE, the variant showing the voiced spirant also
survived, as evidenced by OSp. adormnecer and adurar. It is therefo
likely that [atomar] and [a8om~r] coexisted in Proto-Hispano-
Romance, a state of affairs that could have yielded the following
analogy:
[asomar] : [domar] = [atomar] : X
X = [tomair].
A similar analogical proportion no doubt underlies OSp. turar, a not
infrequent variant of aturar mentioned by both Nebrija (s.v. turar)
and Valdes (182f.), and still used in Judeo-Spanish.17
To understand why *atomar disappeared in favor of tomar be-
fore the appearance of the earliest documents in Castilian vernacu-
lar, we must review briefly the history of the verbal prefix AD-.
Whereas in Classical Latin AD- could impart nuances reflecting the
various meanings of the underlying preposition, in the sermo ple-
beius prefixed variants in AD- became, to a large extent, semantically
indistinguishable from the primitives, a tendency perceptible as early
as Plautus (Cooper 258; Grandgent 14). By the time of the earliest
Old Spanish, the prefix was devoid of semantic value (Penny, His-
tory 238). While in a relatively small group of verbs, presence vs.
absence of a- corresponded to miscellaneous differences in meaning
(e.g., acoger 'to welcome' vs. coger 'to seize,' acometer 'to attack' vs.
cometer 'to commit,' poner 'to put' vs. aponer 'to impute, blame,' and
prender 'to take' vs. aprender 'to learn'), the vast majority of such
pairs were mere synonyms and, as such, largely interchangeable.18
17 Cuervo provides medieval examples of both aturar and turar (s.v. durar).
is The interchangeability of the forms with or without a- is highlighted by Valdes,
who, when pressed by Marcio on that point, replied that he used the form with a- when
the preceding word ended in a consonant and the form without a- when the preceding
Cursory inspection of entries under the letter "A

dictionary of medieval Spanish reveals eighty su
pairs.19 Tracing the growth of those forms into
(Moliner and Real Academia), we find that four
use,20 fifteen have survived in both the prefixe
versions,21 ten have survived in only the prefixe
fifty-one instances only the unprefixed variant
another way, the long-term trend is unquestiona
tion of forms with meaningless a- in favor of th
terparts. Seen in this light, the demise of *atoma
seems predictable, if not inevitable.24
Derivation of tomar from *ADDOMARE presents a
the phonetic level. Given the short stem-vowel of
pects rhizotonic forms of tomar to feature a diphtho
my knowledge, no such forms as *tuemo, *tuem
*tueman are recorded at any stage in the history
apparent irregularity in fact reinforces the link t
stem-vowel of Sp. domar similarly failed to diph
stress. That anomalous development even led Cor
rio,2, s.v. domar) to declare Sp. domar "sospe
tismo." His suspicion, however, rested on circula
word ended in a vowel, a "norm" that even he fell short of

157n).
19 Analogous Portuguese pairs are supplied by Cornu (949f.). Michaelis de Vas-
concellos (74-75) provides an assortment of Hispano-Romance words, mostly nouns,
that suffered aphaeresis of a-.
20 (A)conhortar, (a)melecinar, (a)muchiguar, and (a)premir.
21 (A)bajar, (a)baldonar, (a)cocear, (a)combar, (a)cotar, (a)doctrinar, (a)fin-
car, (a)lanzar, (a)palpar, (a)pegar, (a)personarse, (a)pesgar, (a)posar, (a)sosegar,
and (a) travesar.
22 (A)crecentar, (a)cuitar, (a)divinar, (a)gradecer, (a)menazar, (a)mortajar,
(a)mortiguar, (a)rremeter, (a)rrendar, and (a)tribular.
23 (A)bever, (a)blasmar, (a)bostezar, (a)casarse, (a)castrar, (a)cimentar,
(a)codiciar, (a)colgar, (a)colorar, (a)comediar, (a)condesar, (a)conjurar, (a)con-
seguir, (a)consolar, (a)contrastar, (a)culpar, (a)dar, (a)dever, (a)donar, (a)durar,
(a)falagar, (a)fallecer, (a)fartar, (a)fermrosear, (a)ferventar, (a)fietar, (a)foradar,
(a)fornecer, (a)fortalecer, (a)forzar, (a)granizar, (a)grandecer, (a)guisar,
(a)levantar, (a)limpiar, (a)mandar, (a)mostrar, (a)osar, (a)pacer, (a)pertenecer,
(a)pesar, (a)ponzofiar, (a)apregonar (a)presentar, (a)solazar, (a)someter,
(a)sondar, (a)sumar, (a)temer, (a)templar, and (a)vagar.
24 This point was not lost on Rajna (see above).
domar, attested as early as the twelfth c

twelfth or early thirteenth in Portuguese
Machado), behaves in all other respects like a verb passed down
through oral tradition. Moreover, evidence from other Romance
languages strongly supports oral rather than learned transmission of
domar. Indeed, the verb's occurrence in early medieval Sardinian
documents, along with its vitality in Italo-, Gallo- and Hispano-
Romance folk speech makes learned transmission highly improba-
ble. But even more importantly, in all Romance standard languages
that preserve the seven-vowel system of Late Spoken Latin, namely
Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, and Provencal, rhizotonic forms of
domar(e) and domdar exhibit a close rather than an open mid-
vowel,25 thereby strongly suggesting that C.L. /6/ in stem-stressed
forms of this lexeme had evolved to /o/, rather than /3/ at the
Proto-Romance stage. Learned transmission can under no circum-
stances be invoked to explain the close mid-vowel in those languages
since, in all three, tonic o in Latinisms, regardless of Classical quan-
tity, is routinely rendered as /3/.26
Returning to Spanish, it is well known that Classical Latin
stressed /6/ failed to produce a diphthong in certain words, especially
when followed by a nasal consonant. True, in most of those cases
(e.g., COMPARAT 'he buys' > compra, CONTRA 'against' > contra, MONTE
'mountain' > monte, RESPONDET 'she answers' > responde), the sylla-
ble occupied by /6/ was checked by the nasal. That was not the case,
however, in rhizotonic forms of Lat. COMEDERE, whose Spanish con-
tinuators have at all stages exhibited /o/.27 In short, absence of
diphthongization in the stem-stressed forms of tomar is no argument
against derivation from DOMARE.
I suggested above that-with the sole exception of MUTUARE,
25 Casteldes cites Port. doma and toma as a rhyming pair (468). D'Ovidio and
Meyer-Ltibke (82) and Gabrielli (s.v. domare) show rhizotonic forms of It. domare
with close /o/, as does Levy (1966) for Provengal domdar. My department colleague
Alfonso Morales-Front, a native speaker of Catalan, has informed me that stem-
stressed forms of Cat. domar also exhibit close /o/.
26 Badia Margarit, Gramdtica hist6rica 147; D'Ovidio and Meyer-Liibke 72, 79;
and Williams 37.
27 Corominas, who offered no explanation for the absence of diphthongs in

stem-stressed forms of comer, did not raise the possibility of semilearnid transmis-
sion of that verb (Diccionario1,2 s.v. comer).
which fails on phonetic grounds-all previously su

tomar were unconvincing for semantic reasons.
meanings bore little if any relation to the act of
mental sense of tomar. At first glance, one might
that same criticism against *ADDOME as etymon
'taming' and 'taking' unquestionably belong to di
ently unrelated semantic spheres. Closer inspectio
evidence, however, reveals that 1) all the major sense
were continued in OSp. tomar, and 2) OSp. tomar
curred in contexts analogous to those in which DO
Latin. To illustrate these important points, I reproduce below all
meanings of DOMARE listed by the Oxford Latin Dictionary. After
each meaning, I provide textual examples of nouns that actually
occurred as direct objects of both Lat. DOMARE and OSp. tomar.28
1. To subdue (animals) by taming, domesticate, break in; to

habituate (things)
DOMRE: bears, dragons, lions, tigers, wolves; asses, bulls, cows, dogs,
horses, sheep; partridges, birds.
tomar: caballos, camellos, cierva, cochino, gallo, liebre, merino,
ovejas; aiores, aves, pardal, perdizes, rosinor.29
2. To subdue by war, subjugate, overcome; to defeat in single

combat, lay low
DOMRE: Africa, Aquitania, Asia, Asian cities, Balearic Islands, Boeotia,
Cantabria, Dalmatia, Etruria, Europe, Germania, Latium, Olympus,
Pannonia, the Rhine, Rome, Sicily, Spain, Thebes, Troy, unknown
islands.
tomar: Alcala, Antiochia, Astorga, Babilonia, Baeqa, Bretanna,
28 For the convenience of non-Latinists, I have provided the Latin data in English
translation. The original Latin forms may be found in textual citations furnished by the
Oxford Latin Dictionary, Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, and Forcellini (s.v. DOMO and
derivatives). Old Spanish data come from the Libro de buen amor (Corominas, Libro;
Mignani, Di Cesare, and Jones), the works of Juan Manuel (Ayerbe-Chaux) and the
Gran conquista de ultramar (Waltman and Cooper), all fourteenth-century works
chosen for the ready availability of concordances providing context, rather than just
line numbers, for each citation.
29 OSp. tomar, unlike its modem continuator, counted among its meanings 'cazar,
buscar o seguir a las aves, fieras y otras muchas clases de animales para cogerlos o
matarlos' (Alonso Pedraz).
Calatrava, el Cayre, Cuenca, Espanna, Jerusalen, Leon, Madrit,

Montfort, Narbona, Sevilla; ciudad, villa.
3. To reduce (persons) to subservience, gain control over, sub-

due
DOMARE: armies, Cassandra, citizens, girls, guardians, kings, the

multitude, murderers, women.
tomar: burgeses ricos, cativo, christianos, fembra, imperador, ladr6n,
rey, un ribaldo, un vellaco romano.
4. To bring under control, subdue, tame (emotions, actions, im-

pulses, conditions, etc.) (one's own feelings, faculties, etc.)
DOMKRE: anger, arrogance, desires, fear, fury, hope, insolence, libido,

love, lust, pain, passions, pleasures, rage, stubbornness, vices,
violence, want.
tomar: afan, asco, duda, esfuerqo, enojo, ira, miedo, peligro, pereza,
pesar, plazer, recelo, soberuia, solaz, tristeza, verguenqa.
5. To reduce (things) to a milder, amenable, usable, condition,

form, etc.; to overcome by traversing, master; to bring land under
cultivation
DOMARE: Alps, earth, fields, forests.

tomar: toda la tierra.
In #1, in both Latin and Old Spanish the emphasis is on huma

control over the behavior of animals. The Latin nuance of domesti-
cation, evidently absent from tomar, is perhaps continued in the
Alentejo dialect of Portuguese, where tomar may signify 'to yoke o
harness animals to a cart or plow' (Gomes Fradinho 122), a usag
reminiscent of Columella (456), the Spanish Latin author on agricul
tural matters, who recommended breaking barren cows to the plow
(taurae ... aratro domandae). In #2, the objects of DOMARE and
tomar are toponyms, usually designating cities, provinces, or coun-
tries. Here the meanings of the Latin and Spanish verbs are nearly
identical since, as in English, to subdue a city or country by war, and
thereby subjugate it, is tantamount to taking it from its previous
rulers. In #3, where the direct objects denote human beings, the main
idea is gaining physical control over another, often by taking that
individual captive. In #4, the emphasis has shifted from controlling
an emotion to merely experiencing it. (This use of tomar declined
significantly in the transition from medieval to modern Spanish.)
Finally, in #5, taking land often meant bringing it

this connection, it is noteworthy that Fray Martin S
in the mid-eighteenth century, defined Gal. tom
tierra comuin que se cierra para sembrar,' a striki
Latin usage illustrated in #5 ('to bring land unde
The fact that tomar appears to continue specif
DOMARE and occurs in analagous contexts does n
how a Latin verb with the meanings reproduced
evolved by the time of early Old Spanish into the ge
take,' eventually even marginalizing prender, wh
other Romance languages. I submit that three set
one phonetic, one lexico-semantic, and one cultu
all unique to the Iberian Peninsula, conspired to
ment in Hispano-Romance.
The phonetic circumstance is the devoicing that gave rise to
tomar. To my knowledge, devoicing of the Latin voiced geminates of
the sort evidenced in OSp. atormecer, aturar, and aterir was a
phonetic option limited to Hispano-Romance. At least in certain
instances, its operation produced sets of doublets one member of
which exhibited /d/ and the other /t/. In the case of Sp. and Port.
domar and adomar, the relation to Lat. DOMARE has been transparent
at all historical stages. One consequence of that phonetic proximity
could well have been a certain control over the semantic trajectory
of domar exercised by its Latin etymon. Indeed, the meaning of
Sp./Port. domar has remained remarkably close to that of DOM RE,
with almost all nuances of the Latin verb preserved in Modem
Spanish and Portuguese, as in most other Romance languages. The
case of tomar (and *atomar), however, is radically different. Once
speakers had reassigned the stem-initial consonant to the phoneme
/t/, neither they nor subsequent generations could reasonably have
been expected to continue to bracket tomar with cognate domar or
etymon DOMARE. Consequently, the semantic control exerted by
DOMARE over domar would have been entirely absent in the case of
tomar. Put in another way, obstacles to semantic change affecting
domar simply did not exist for tomar. Indeed, semantic change
might even have been favored by the lexical redundancy involved in
the language possessing, at the outset, two verbs, domar and tomar,
with identical meanings.
The second circumstance favoring emergence of tomar 'to take'
is semantic proximity, at the Latin stage, of DOMARE to PREHENDERE.
Among meanings listed for the latter ve

Dictionary are 'to take hold of (persons) etc. for the purpose of
carrying off, to take into custody, arrest; to capture, catch (animals)';
'to take (bulls, horses) in hand (in order to tame them)'; (mil.) 'to
take possession of, occupy (a position),' all meanings highly remi-
niscent of DOMARE (cf. Oxford Latin Dictionary definition cited
above). It is striking, in this regard, that the Thesaurus Linguae
Latinae includes CAPERE, the most general Latin word for 'to take,'
among synonyms of DOMARE. Thus, while on the face of it a semantic
relationship between 'to tame' and 'to take' may seem unlikely, it is
clear that the latter concept already constituted a significant com-
ponent of the semantic makeup of DOMARE at the Latin stage. In the
light of that original semantic overlap with PREHENDERE, destined to
become the basic word for 'to take' in most other Romance lan-
guages, one may easily envision a reflex of DOMARE, by a so

semantic analogy, extending into other corners of PREHENDERE'S
ritory.
The third circumstance favoring semantic extension of tomar
was the peculiar historical and cultural milieu that formed the back-
drop to Proto-Hispano-Romance. From speakers' perspective, the
main thrust of the eight hundred years following the Muslim con-
quest of the early eighth century was one of intermittent war and
regaining of territory, followed time and again by repopulation and
cultivation of newly conquered land as a means of establishing firm
control. War, defeat and subjugation of the enemy, and bringing
newly reconquered land under control and cultivation, represented
perennial themes in the lives of generations of speakers of Proto-
Hispano-Romance. Vocabulary associated with that multisecular
trend might well have enjoyed greater vitality in the Iberian Penin-
sula than in other Romance domains, a situation that could have
favored semantic extension of tomar.
Excursus on Sp. Gal. atondar
Romance etymologists have generally assumed that DOMITARE per-

sisted only in Gallo-Romance, where it prevailed at an early date over
primitive DOMARE. Had frequentative *ADDOMITARE survived into
Hispano-Romance, it would, following the pattern of ADDORMISCERE >
atormecer, *ADDURARE > aturar, and *ADDERIGERE > aterir, predict-
ably have evolved to atondar. A verb of precisely that form is
characteristic of Galician, where it is defined as '

acomodarse bien a algo' (Boull6n Agrelo s.v. atond
that recalls both Oxford Latin Dictionary meani
also the meanings of Brazilian Portuguese adoma
resign oneself) and Catalan adondar-se ('acomodar-se, avesar-se a
una cosa que abans era molestosa o dificil') alluded to above.
Spanish also possesses a verb atondar 'to goad a horse with the
legs or spurs,' obviously in an attempt to control the animal's behav-
ior. In my judgment, that verb is more likely--on phonetic, morpho-
logical, and semantic grounds-to descend from *ADDOMITA-RE, in the
sense of Oxford Latin Dictionary meaning #1 above, than from
either ATTONITU 'struck by thunder, stunned, terrified' (Corominas,
Diccionario,2, s.v. atuendo) or *ATTUNDERE (Real Academia s.v.
atondar), based on TUNDERE 'to strike,' a third-conjugation verb that
appears to have left no other Romance progeny.
Finally, atondo, a word that turns up repeatedly in medieval
Portuguese legal documents written in Latin, defined by Viterbo as
'direito de rotear, romper, agricultar algum terreno inculto e redu-
zido a mato bravo, e utilizar-se das suas produ?6es, nao o podendo
dar, doar, trocar ou vender, sendo un mero usufrutuhrio e nao direito
senhorio,' could well represent a continuation of past participle
*ADDOMITU in the sense of Oxford Latin Dictionary meaning #5 above
('to bring land under cultivation'), an etymon considerably more
plausible than the one advanced in Viterbo (s.v. atondo), namely
*ATTONDITUM 'sheared' (cf. recorded ATTONSUM).
All these words provide strong collateral evidence for derivation
of tomar from *ADDOMA-E.
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The Etymology of Hispano-Romance Tomar 'To Take'

Author(s): Thomas J. Walsh

Tra i vocaboli che ogni cultore prudente

F the forty most frequently

elements already present in DOMARE at the

mar, he observed that while speakers would sure

Leo Spitzer, who dismissed the solution based on AUTUMARE

3 Malkiel also found Corominas' arguments against the onomatopoeic solution

yielded -m- by regular phonetic change

have linked AES- with the homophonous Latin w

strained and farfetched (Corominas, Diccionario,,2 s.v. tomar; M

DOMAUI and DOMATU also turn up in pos

9 Azzolini; Brero; Casaccia; Cherubini; Mattioli; Nazari; Ponza; Zanette.

in Umbria adom6 alternates with dom6; (Moretti

12 Barracano; D'Ambra; D'Ascoli; Giarrizzo; Piccitto; Rohlfs Dizionario and

I contend that tomar is the Hispano-Rom

Reinterpretation of the Latin voiceless gemina

respectively, from Lat. *ADDERIGERE and *AD

[asomar] : [domar] = [atomar] : X

Cursory inspection of entries under the letter "A

word ended in a vowel, a "norm" that even he fell short of

domar, attested as early as the twelfth c

27 Corominas, who offered no explanation for the absence of diphthongs in

which fails on phonetic grounds-all previously su

1. To subdue (animals) by taming, domesticate, break in; to

2. To subdue by war, subjugate, overcome; to defeat in single

tomar: Alcala, Antiochia, Astorga, Babilonia, Baeqa, Bretanna,

Calatrava, el Cayre, Cuenca, Espanna, Jerusalen, Leon, Madrit,

3. To reduce (persons) to subservience, gain control over, sub-

DOMARE: armies, Cassandra, citizens, girls, guardians, kings, the

4. To bring under control, subdue, tame (emotions, actions, im-

DOMKRE: anger, arrogance, desires, fear, fury, hope, insolence, libido,

5. To reduce (things) to a milder, amenable, usable, condition,

DOMARE: Alps, earth, fields, forests.

In #1, in both Latin and Old Spanish the emphasis is on huma

Finally, in #5, taking land often meant bringing it

Among meanings listed for the latter ve

guages, one may easily envision a reflex of DOMARE, by a so

Excursus on Sp. Gal. atondar

Romance etymologists have generally assumed that DOMITARE per-

characteristic of Galician, where it is defined as '

Alcover, Antoni, and Francesc de Borja Moll. Diccionari catal4-

Aragiies, Chus6. Dizionario aragonds-c

Corominas, Joan. Diccionari etimologic i complem

Cunha, Antonio Geraldo da. indice do vocabulario do portuguds

Griera y Gaja, Antonio. Atlas lingiiistic de Catalunya. Barcelona:

-. Romanisches etymologisches Worterbuch. 3d ed. Heidelberg:

Miguelez Rodriguez, Eugenio. Diccionario de las hablas leonesas.

-. Diccionario de la lengua espaf~ola. 18th ed. Madrid: Real

Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Editus auctoritate et consilio aca-

dances of Biblioteca Nacional Manuscript 1187,

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respectively, from Lat. ADDERIGERE and AD