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Vulgar Latin *convĭāre
Vulgar Latin had another verb derived from vĭāre, namely *convĭāre, which meant ‘to go
together on the road, to accompany on the way’ and, derived from that meaning, ‘to
escort’. This verb was derived by means of the prefix com- ‘together’. This verb did not get passed on to Spanish, but it
resulted in convoier in Old Central French
and in conveier in Old Northern French,
and both versions of the verb got passed on to English, both in the 14th century.[1]
Old French convoier,
meaning primarily ‘to escort’, became Eng. to
convoy
[ˈkɒn.vɔɪ̯], originally pronounced
with final stress. This verb today means ‘to travel with something in order to
protect it’ (DOCE). This verb came first into Scots English with the senses ‘to
convey’, ‘to conduct’, and ‘to act as escort’. The main Spanish equivalent of
this verb is escoltar, a cognate of
Eng. escort. The loanword convoyar has also been used for this meaning in Spanish, but it
is very rare.
The noun convoy, also pronounced
[ˈkɒn.vɔɪ̯] in Modern English, like the verb, means ‘a
group of vehicles or ships travelling together, sometimes in order to protect
one another’ (DOCE). The noun convoy does
not appear in English until the 16th century, two centuries later than the
verb. It may be a back-formation from the English verb to convoy or else, it may
be a borrowing from French convoi [kɔ̃.ˈvwa], a noun derived from the
verb convoier which, speaking of vehicles
or ships, meant ‘to convoy’, though it has can also be used with the sense of 'procession', as in convoi funèbre ‘funeral procession’. At least originally, Fr. convoi conveyed the sense that some of the
members of the convoy were escorting others, typically for protection.
Spanish borrowed the noun convoy, pronounced [kom.ˈboi̯], in the 17th century, with the
same meaning it has in English and spelling pronunciation (plural: comboyes). Presumably, it was borrowed
from French convoi, though the
Spanish word’s spelling is like that of the English word, with a final y, but that is most likely due to the
fact that that is how the diphthong [oi̯]
is spelled at the end of a word in Spanish.
Another possible Spanish translation for Eng. convoy is caravana. The expression to
travel in convoy translates into Spanish as viajar en convoy or as viajar
en caravana. Eng. caravan
originally meant ‘a group of people travelling together across a desert in Asia
or North Africa’ (COED). Nowadays, the main meaning of this word in North
America is ‘a covered motor vehicle with living accommodation’ (Sp. caravana, casa rodante, etc.) and in Britain, ‘a vehicle equipped for living
in, usually designed to be towed’ (COED) (Sp. caravana, rulot, remolque). (A gypsy caravan or covered
cart is known as carromato in
Spanish.) The ‘procession’ sense of Eng. caravan
can also be translated as caravana
or, more commonly, as procesión. (The noun procession can be defined as 'a number of people or vehicles moving forward in an orderly fashion, especially as part of a ceremony' and, derived from this meaning, 'the action of moving in such a way' and 'a relentless succession of people or things', COED.)
The cognates Eng. caravan
~ Sp. caravana, were probably
borrowed from French caravane. The
Spanish word is first documented in the 14th century and the English one, in
the 16th. The ancestor of this word is first attested in Europe in Medieval Latin
in the 12th century, with different spellings having been recorded: carvana, caravanna, caravenna. It
is a word picked up by Europeans in the Middle East during the Crusades and it
comes ultimately from Persian کاروان (kârvân) ‘caravan, convoy’, a word derived from the
Proto-Indo-European root *ker‑
‘army’. (English had a now obsolete word here
that meant ‘army, hostile force’ that descends from the same PIE root.)
The other Old French reflex of Vulgar Latin *convĭāre is conveier, which was borrowed into English
as the verb to convey [kən.ˈveɪ̯],
also in the 14th century. The modern meanings of this word are ‘transport or carry
to a place’, ‘communicate (an idea, impression, or feeling)’ and, in legal terminology,
‘transfer the title to (property)’ (COED). The verb convey has different translations into Spanish, the most common of which
are transportar (goods and people) and
transmitir, comunicar, expresar (ideas,
feelings, thanks, sound, electricity). In legal terminology, to convey
translates as traspasar (a cognate of
Eng. trespass) or transferir (a cognate of Eng. transfer).
[1] Note that this verb does not seem to have been
used in Classical Latin. Latin did have verb convehĕre ‘to carry, bear, or bring together’ (L&S), which is
not related to the Vulgar Latin verb, despite going back to the same
Proto-Indo-European root and contain the same prefix. There are no reflexes of
this Latin verb in neither Spanish or English.
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