albi

Forms

albi (third-person singular present albește, past participle albit) 4th conjugation^[1]

Etymology

DELR and the DA take it as inherited from Vulgar Latin *albiō (“to become white”), standing for Latin albeō (“to be white”) and albēscō (“to become white”);^[2][3][4][5] Pușcariu, Candrea and Densusianu and the REW held the same view.^[2][3][4][5] Wiktionary calls this probable.^[1] Ciorănescu notes that it could just as well be an internal formation from Romanian alb (“white”) + -i, like înroși and înnegri, and DELR names Cihac, Hasdeu, Scriban and the DEX for that view, which MDA2 also takes.^[4][2][6][7] The adjective alb is albus (“white”).^[4]

The verb survives south of the Danube: Aromanian alghescu and Megleno-Romanian albiri.^[2][1] The Latin inchoative verb also survives in Sardinian albeskere and in Sicilian and Calabrian dialect verbs, there meaning “to dawn”, a sense old Romanian shared.^[2][5][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 dates the first record to 1564, in a fragment of Coresi's Molitvenic quoted by Hasdeu.^[7] Tiktin gives Coresi's Psalter of 1577 (Psalm 50), and DELR a text of about 1650.^[8][2] The early sense is to become white, as in the psalm verse “wash me and I shall be whiter than snow”, where Dosoftei writes albi-mă-voi and Coresi înălbi-mă-voi.^[3]

Semantic evolution

From becoming white the verb passed to hair turning grey and so to growing old: de când am albit “since I went grey”.^[3][6] It also means to show white against a dark ground, to gleam: a house on a hilltop is seen albind.^[8][3] In the old language se albește de ziuă meant “day is breaking”, a sense shared with Sardinian.^[8][3]

Transitively it means to make white, above all to bleach new linen by washing and drying it in the sun; the textile industry uses it for bleaching and for blueing.^[8][7][6] A figurative sense, to clear someone's name, is old, and since the 2000s the press has used it for clearing politicians of collaboration with the Securitate and, after French blanchir, for laundering money.^[7][9]

Timeline

• 1564 – albi in a fragment of Coresi's Molitvenic, the first record.^[7]
• 1577 – albi in Coresi's Psalter.^[8]
• 1649 – albesc glosses Slavonic убѣлѧу “I whiten” in Mardarie's lexicon.^[10]
• c. 1650 – albi in an anonymous dictionary, DELR's first record.^[2]
• 1688 – albit in the Bucharest Bible.^[11]
• 1862 – realbi “to whiten again”, in Pontbriant.^[2]
• 2004 – a albi banii “to launder money” in the press.^[9]

Meanings

Verb

1. To whiten, to become or make whiter.^[6][1]
2. To bleach textiles with oxidizing or reducing agents; to blue textiles for an intense white; to decolour a product partly or wholly.^[6][1]
3. To turn grey; by extension, to grow old.^[6][3]
4. To stand out by its white colour;^[6][12] (figurative) to gleam.^[6][12]
5. (figurative, recent) To clear someone of suspicion; to launder money.^[9]

Word family

• albit
• albire
• albitor

Related words

• alb

Usage notes

A-i albi cuiva ochii după ceva means “to look at something with longing”, also “to wait for something in vain”.^[3][7]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. alb
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. albi
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. alb
5. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 320
6. ^ 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. 25
7. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 35
8. ^ 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. albi
9. ^ a b c Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. albi
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. albesc
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Rev 7:14
12. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. albi