dejar

Meaning

(transitive) to leave (to place)
(transitive) to leave, to keep (to allow to continue)
(transitive) to leave (to cause, result in)
(transitive) to let, allow
(transitive) to let go, put down (to release from one's grasp)
(transitive) to drop off
(transitive) to leave, to abandon, to dump
(transitive) to give up, to lay off, to kick (colloquial)
(transitive) to set, to put, to make (in certain phrases)
(Spain,colloquial,transitive) to cut out (stop)
(intransitive) to leave off
(intransitive) to cease, stop
(reflexive) to be left
(reflexive) to let (oneself), to let oneself go (to cease to care about one's appearance)

Frequency

Hyphenated as

de‧jar

Pronounced as (IPA)

/deˈxaɾ/

Etymology

Inherited from Old Spanish dexar, from Early Old Spanish lexar, from Latin laxāre, whence also laxar (a borrowed doublet). Also compare Portuguese and Galician deixar, Asturian dexar, Aragonese deixar, Catalan deixar, Occitan daissar, laissar, Sicilian dassari and both French laisser and délaisser. Early Old Spanish generally has l-, forms appearing with d- towards 1200. The change of the initial l- to d- in many (especially Iberian) Romance languages has been explained in various ways: most likely, it is due to the influence of the preposition de, often used in constructions with this verb, or from an influence of, or contraction of, Late Latin dēlaxāre (also attested in Old Spanish as delexar), due to rapid pronunciation (as is common in quasi-auxiliary verbs). Less likely explanations include influence from the verb dar (“to give”), or derivation from Latin dēsinere, the latter proving difficult on phonetic grounds. Compare English lease (sense 5), lax, and laxative.