obligara

Obligara is a term found in discussions of Romance-language verb conjugation, typically encountered in historical Portuguese orthography. It is generally treated as an archaic or regional variant of the modern verb obrigar, which means to oblige, compel, or bind. The root of the word is Latin obligare, meaning to bind, with the Portuguese form evolving through Old Portuguese spellings into the contemporary obrigar.

In older manuscripts and grammars, obligara appears as a spelling variant influenced by earlier orthographic practices that did not standardize the -ar verb conjugations as they are today. In contemporary Portuguese, the standard verb is obrigar, and the common subjunctive and past forms are obrigasse and related forms. As a historical form, obligara is of interest to linguists studying the evolution of Portuguese spelling and verb inflection, and may be cited in philological discussions or lexicographic notes about variant spellings.

In dictionaries that document historical orthography, obligara is typically marked as archaic or obsolete. The term does not have a separate widely recognized meaning beyond its role as a historical variant of obrigar, and it is not used in modern standard Portuguese. See also obrigar and the broader history of Portuguese verb conjugation.