împinge

Forms

împinge (third-person singular present împinge, past participle împins, third-person subjunctive împingă) 3rd conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin impingō (“to thrust into, push”).^{[2][3][4][5][6][1]} The verb survives as Aromanian pingu.^[2][7][8] Papahagi derives it from Latin pingō, Pascu from a variant of the classical pangō (“to fix, fasten”), and Wiktionary allows that it is the Latin verb without its prefix.^[7][9][1] The Romance cognates include Italian impingere, Old French empeindre, Occitan empenher and Catalan empenyer.^[2][6]

The rare pinge does not continue the Latin verb “to paint”: Ciorănescu explains it as the full verb with its first syllable lost.^[2] For the regional sense “to spend, pay”, Giuglea proposed impendō (“to spend”), confused with the present verb because the two had the same participle, and the DA and MDA2 follow him.^[10][4] Ciorănescu finds the examples unconvincing and derives that sense from the same verb as the rest.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (early 16th century) has the participle împins and the past împinse, împinseși.^[11] Coresi's Psalter of 1570 has the infinitive împinge.^[12] MDA2 gives the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578) as its first record.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The physical sense “to push, shove” is the oldest, and in the psalters it is often “to thrust away, cast off”, a sense now archaic.^[13][5][3] Figurative senses followed: “to drive, urge someone to do something” and “to push someone forward to a position they do not deserve”.^[5][3] The regional “to spend, pay” is recorded from 1920, and a împinge bani cuiva is “to bribe someone”.^[4][5] A proverb says o trag, nu vine, o-mping, nu merge “I pull it, it won't come;^[3] I push it, it won't go”, of a thing that will not work whatever one does.^[3]

Timeline

• early 16th century – împins, împinse and împinseși in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[11]
• 1570 – the infinitive in Coresi's Psalter.^[12]
• c. 1573–1578 – in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[4][14]
• 1688 – frequent in the Bucharest Bible.^[15]
• 1920 – the regional sense “to pay”, in Dacoromania.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To push: to move someone or something by pressing against them; intransitive, to lean with all one's weight in order to move something.^[5][4][1]
2. To make advance, to carry far;^[5] (figurative, often pejorative) to help someone to a position they do not deserve.^[5]
3. (figurative) To urge, goad someone to do something.^[5][1]
4. (reflexive) To jostle, push one's way forward; transitive, to shove.^[5]
5. (archaic) To drive away;^[5] (figurative) to reject.^[5]
6. (regional) To spend money; to pay.^[5][4]

Word family

• împingător
• împinsătură
• împingere

Related words

• respinge
• Aromanian pingu

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. împinge
3. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. împinge
4. ^ 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, 1192
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 534
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4309
7. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 845
8. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 822
9. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 143
10. ^ 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. împinge
11. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 117:13
12. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 26:15
13. ^ Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 42:2
14. ^ Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 76:7
15. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Psaltirea 117:13