Augment your Vocabulary

Adjective

[endz-vil]

1. Most excellent or the best.

2. Most undesirable; the end. 

Origin: From end + -ville (place, city).

a parchment or the like from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make room for another text

“Dances would have been held there; the music lingered, a palimpsest of of unheard sound…”

(Voy a responder en inglés, ya que mi respuesta puede ser… algo complicada, creo)

When you’re talking about ponerse and volverse as in “to become”, they fall under the category of los verbos de cambio “verbs of change”

Specifically these verbs all sort of translate as “to become” or “to turn”, but in different contexts… These would be ponerse, volverse, hacerse, convertirse, transformarse, and llegar a ser for the most part.

They all make sense, but in different contexts.

When talking about the two verbs ponerse and volverse in particular, their main point of difference is a sense of being drastic or surprising or unexpected.

First, ponerse has a few different meanings aside from to become, so I’ll just list the other meanings that are most common:

ponerse el sol = for the sun to set

ponerse la ropa = to put on clothes

The ponerse that means “to become” is more commonly used with short-term emotions and conditions. They aren’t usually drastic, and for the most part you see it with emotions more than anything.

When they’re used for emotions, it becomes synonymous with the verb for the emotion… That’s a bad way of explaining it but you’ll see what I mean in examples:

ponerse triste = to get sadentristecerse = to get sad, to become saddened

ponerse enojado/a = to get angryenojarse = to get angry, to become angered

ponerse furioso/a = to get furiousenfurecerse = to become furious, to become infuriated

ponerse alegre / feliz / contento/a = to get happyalegrarse = to become happy, to become glad

ponerse enfermo/a = to get sickenfermarse = to get sick, to become sickened

It can exist with other adjectives as in “to get” but I think of it mostly as something short-lived, or related to someone’s mood.

With volverse as “to become”, it’s almost always something drastic, sudden, and/or unexpected. 

The most common expression with volverse is volverse loco/a “to go crazy” as opposed to enloquecerse “to go crazy, to go mad”

It can sometimes be used to describe someone doing something very profound or difficult. Like you might see volverse devoto/a “to become devout” or in religious contexts volverse puro/a “to become pure, to become purified”… The volverse just means that it’s difficult, a sudden shift or switch, or profound in these cases.

The other common way I see it is with colors, but there are some key differences.

ponerse verde (de envidia) = to become green (with envy)

volverse verde = to go green [which to me sounds like when you become more mindful of things like recycling]

The other one would be rojo/a

ponerse rojo = to blush, to be red-facedsonrojarse = to blush

volverse rojo/a = to turn red (all over)[if I saw this I would assume someone’s skin turned bright red all over their body in a possibly scary medical way… The only two ways I can think of this actually being applicable is if you got a REALLY bad sunburn everywhere, or if a river turned red or something like chemicals or algae or that Biblical plague water turning to blood kind of thing]