împăra

Forms

împăra (third-person singular present împărează, past participle împărat), 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin impālō (“to fix with stakes”), formed with in- on pālus (“stake”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The Latin verb is recorded in the law codes of the Burgundians and other Germanic peoples.^[1] Candrea and Densusianu and the DA also took it directly from Latin, as Ciorănescu reports.^[6]

Ciorănescu instead lists it among the Romanian derivatives of par (“stake”), and Tiktin gives both explanations.^[6][4] The REW records an Aromanian verb meaning “to gore with the horns” beside it.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin and MDA2 take the first record from the Moldavian law code of Vasile Lupu (1646), where an animal that gets into a vineyard „se va împăra în gard și va muri” “will be impaled on the fence and die”.^[4][3][8] The same passage is in the Wallachian Îndreptarea legii.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The verb goes with stakes: to drive them into the ground, to prop a vine with them, to get impaled on one, and to impale someone.^[2][3][5] In the Banat it came to mean stitching sacks with a thick needle.^[2][9]

It also meant “to make public”, by a sign set on top of a pole: Tiktin quotes Sevastos on a village where a lost watch was proclaimed by the headman, „satul l-a-mpărat prin vornic”.^[4][8][1] The DA compares the verb părui “to stake a vine”.^[2][6]

Timeline

• 1646 – se va împăra in Vasile Lupu's law code.^[4][3]
• 1652 – the same passage in Îndreptarea legii.^[4]
• 1825 – “to stake a vine” in the Lexicon de la Buda.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (old) to drive stakes into the ground, especially to stake a vine.^[3][2]
2. (old) to impale.^[5][8][1]
3. (regional, reflexive) to prick oneself, to get caught on something sharp.^[3][9]
4. (regional) to stitch with a thick needle.^[3][2]
5. (old) to make public, to proclaim.^[3][5][1]

Related words

• par
• părui
• Latin pālus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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. împăra
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1188
4. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. împăra
5. ^ a b c d Academia Republicii Populare Romîne (1958), Dicționarul limbii romîne moderne, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 402
6. ^ a b c 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. par
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6182
8. ^ a b c Candrea, I.-A.; Adamescu, Gh. (1926–1931), Dicționarul enciclopedic ilustrat „Cartea Românească”, București: Cartea Românească, p. s.v. împăra
9. ^ a b Bulgăr, Gheorghe; Constantinescu-Dobridor, Gheorghe (2002), Dicționar de arhaisme și regionalisme, 2 vols., București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. împăra