îmbunătăți

Forms

îmbunătăți (third-person singular present îmbunătățește, past participle îmbunătățit), 4th conjugation^[1] An older first-conjugation variant îmbunătăța (present îmbunătățez) is recorded from Dosoftei (1686) and was still used by Grigore Alexandrescu.^[2][3][4] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 has the shorter îmbunăți (Ruth 3:10).^[5]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian în- + bunătate + -i, “to make good”, from bunătate “goodness”.^{[3][6][2][5][1]} DER lists it among the derivatives of that noun, which continues Latin bonitātem.^[7] Aromanian has a matching verb, ămbunătățǫri.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the first record to 1652, in the law code Îndreptarea legii, with the sense “to make better”.^[2] Tiktin and MDA2 start with the Bucharest Bible of 1688, where it meant “to endow with good qualities, with virtues”.^[5][6]

Semantic evolution

The old sense was moral: Klein's dictionary of 1801 renders it with Latin bonum facio aliquem “I make someone good”.^[8][5] It also came to mean “to approve of”, as in a fable by Donici where the donkeys approve a donkey's counsel with one voice.^[5][6] The modern sense “to make better, improve” was applied to things as well, for instance vines made fruitful by grafting in Șincai.^[5] Today it means, transitively and reflexively, to make or become better, of higher value or quality.^[3][4]

Timeline

• 1652 – first record, in Îndreptarea legii.^[2]
• 1686 – the variant îmbunătăța in Dosoftei.^[2]
• 1688 – îmbunătăți and îmbunăți in the Bucharest Bible.^[5][9]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary glosses it “to make someone good”.^[8]
• 1928 – the noun îmbunătățit “improvement” in the DA.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive and reflexive) To improve: to make or become better, of higher value or quality; to ameliora, to mend: Au îmbunătățit metoda de lucru.^[3][6][1]
2. (dated) To endow with good qualities, with virtues.^[5]
3. (rare) To approve of.^[6][5]

Word family

• îmbunătățire

Related words

• bun
• îmbuna

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2011–), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române (DELR), vol. I: A–B (2011), vol. II: C (2015–2018), București: Editura Academiei Române; continued online at delr.lingv.ro, p. s.v. bun
3. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 532
4. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 568
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. îmbunătăți
6. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1186
7. ^ Ciorănescu, Alexandru (1958–1966), Diccionario etimológico rumano, La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna (Romanian ed.: Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române, București: Saeculum, 2001), p. s.v. bunătate
8. ^ a b Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study)
9. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition)