împăca

Forms

împăca (third-person singular present împacă, past participle împăcat, third-person subjunctive împace), 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *impācō (“to pacify”), a prefixed form of pācō (“to make peaceful, pacify”), as MDA2 and DEX give it.^[2][3][1] Ciorănescu and the DA think instead that the prefix în- was added within Romanian to the inherited Latin verb, and Wiktionary finds this more likely.^[4][5][1] The Latin verb is formed on pāx (“peace”), which also gave pace.^[4][6]

Only Romanian and Albanian keep the Latin sense “to make peace”; in the other Romance languages the verb came to mean “to satisfy by paying, to pay”: Italian pagare, French payer, Spanish pagar and Portuguese pagar.^[4][5][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1551–1553, in a Gospel text at Matthew 5:24.^[8] MDA2's first record is Coresi's Cazania of 1581, where the DA reads the sense “to calm (one's soul)”.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

The DA puts first the sense “to bring peace of mind to someone, to calm”, which it finds in Coresi and in Transylvania, and then “to content, satisfy”.^[5] The main modern sense is “to reconcile”: to end a quarrel between people, or to make up with someone.^[3][5] From there the verb came to mean agreeing on a price or a sum of money, getting used to an idea, and living in good terms with someone.^[3][9] MDA2 also records a rare use, “to take revenge on someone”.^[2]

Romanian made several nouns from the verb: împăcare “reconciliation”, împăcăciune and the old împăcătură.^[4][2]

Timeline

• 1551–1553 – first record, in a Gospel text (Matthew 5:24).^[8]
• 1581 – Coresi's Cazania, MDA2's first record.^[2][5]
• 1649 – împac in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[10]
• 1688 – the Bucharest Bible, among other places at Mark 9:50.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive and reciprocal, usually with cu) To reconcile; to make up with someone.^[3][1]
2. (reciprocal) To come to an agreement, especially about money or a price.^[3]
3. (reflexive) To get used to something, to come to accept an idea.^[3]
4. (transitive) To soothe, calm or appease someone by satisfying them.^[3][1]
5. (reciprocal) To get on, to live in harmony with someone.^[3][1]
6. (transitive) To settle a dispute or a conflict.^[2]

Word family

• împăcăcios
• împăcăciune
• neîmpăcat
• împăcare

Related words

• pace
• împăciui

Usage notes

A împăca și capra și varza “to keep both the goat and the cabbage” means to satisfy both sides of a conflict.^[2][8][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h 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” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1187
3. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 532
4. ^ a b c d 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. împăca
5. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1913–1949), Dicționarul limbii române (DA), ed. Sextil Pușcariu, tom I (A–B, C, D–De) and tom II (F–I, J–Lojniță), București: Socec / Universul / Monitorul Oficial și Imprimeriile Statului; page scans at cflr-scans.solirom.ro, p. s.v. împăca
6. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6132
8. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. împăca
9. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 569
10. ^ Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. împac
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Mk 9:50