to faint (lose consciousness); to cause a person to faint; to dishearten
“[…] Espués que se jueron toos del Panteón, la Maire superiora del hospital, onde me habían llevao, me ijo que le rezáramos un paire nuestro, cuando lo acabamos, yo me golví a esmayar. […]” — After everyone left the Pantheon, the Mother Superior of the hospital, where they had taken me, told me that we should pray an Our Father. When we finished, I fainted again.
Borrowed from Old French esmaier (“to perturb”). Doublet of desmayar. Cognate with Galician esmayar. desmayar and esmayar used to be interchangeable, but esmayar is now obsolete and only found in its adjective form esmayado or more commonly esmayao (being hungry or famished), in southern Spanish dialects. No conjugated instances of desmayar or esmayar meaning "being hungry or famished" have been found. The sense of "being hungry" may have been influenced or derived from Galician-Portuguese esmag