alerga

Forms

alerga (third-person singular present aleargă, past participle alergat, third-person subjunctive alerge), 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is generally inherited from Vulgar Latin *allargō (“to go off into the distance”), a verb formed on largus (“abundant, generous, (late) wide”), whose late sense “wide” led to “far”, the sense the adjective still has in Aromanian largu (“far”) and Albanian larg (“far”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} DELR, the DA, Tiktin, Pușcariu and Candrea–Densusianu all accept this etymon.^[2] Its /e/ in place of the expected /a/ is put down to the influence of merge by Meyer-Lübke, Pușcariu, Candrea–Densusianu and the DA.^[2][4] Graur also thought the etymon clear but the vowel still unexplained.^[6]

The verb survives south of the Danube: Aromanian alag and Megleno-Romanian lag.^[3][7][8] Pascu derives the Aromanian form from a stage ⟨*alărgare⟩ by dissimilation.^[9] Ciorănescu marks an Istro-Romanian alerg as uncertain.^[3] The closest Romance parallels are verbs for moving away: Sardinian allargare “to move off, step aside”.^[3][4] Italian allargare (“to put out to sea”) is a separate formation on largo (“open sea”).^[4]

How “to go far off” became “to run” is debated.^[2] The DA starts from a causative sense “to drive away”.^[2] DELR finds this hard, because the verb is intransitive in the oldest texts and south of the Danube, and prefers Tiktin's “to go off far” or Mihăescu's military largāre (“to break ranks, disperse”), a manoeuvre done at a run.^[2] Ciorănescu rejects this etymon altogether: the Romance forms are recent words of seafaring, the verb for “to go” belongs to another conjugation, and the southern dialects point to another base.^[3] He suggests Latin lēgō (“to commission, send”), through allēgō, with the liquid repeated and then dissimilated.^[3] Older proposals were a phrase of Hasdeu's, Medieval Latin ad largum (“to roam”) and Cihac's Hungarian nyargal (“to gallop”) or Italian allegro, which DELR records as unlikely.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is in the Psaltirea Voronețeană of 1551–1558, with the sense “to go fast, run” and the transitive “to chase, make run”.^[2] Coresi's psalter of 1570 has aleargă and alergară.^[10][11] Tiktin cites the Psaltirea Scheiană (Psalm 18:6) as his first record.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The first senses are running and chasing.^[2][12] From “to run to someone” came “to turn to someone for help or protection”: Tiktin quotes a chronicle in which everyone in danger runs to his friends for defence or comfort.^[12] Running about on business, wandering and roaming a place grew out of the same sense, and modern sport made it the word for running in races.^[5][13] In the 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons alerg glosses Slavonic verbs for running and racing.^[14]

DELR dates most of the family.^[2] Alergător “runner” and alergătură “running about” appear in Coresi in 1566, alergat as a noun about 1650, and alergăriște “horse race” in Dosoftei in 1686.^[2] Alergău “courier” is from the Lexicon de la Buda of 1825, alergaci “courier” from 1870, and the noun alerg “a run” is a back-formation of Coșbuc's.^[2]

Timeline

• 1551–1558 – the first record, in the Psaltirea Voronețeană.^[2]
• 1566 – alergător and alergătură in Coresi.^[2]
• 1570 – aleargă and alergară in Coresi's psalter.^[10]
• 1649 – alerg in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[14]
• c. 1650 – the noun alergat.^[2]
• 1686 – alergăriște “horse race” in Dosoftei.^[2]
• 1825 – alergău “courier” in the Lexicon de la Buda.^[2]
• 1870 – alergaci “courier”.^[2]
• 1899–1913 – the noun alerg in Coșbuc.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To run, go quickly, rush: Copiii alergau prin curte.^[5][1]
2. To run after someone or something to catch them, and transitively to chase someone.^[5][13]
3. To hurry towards a place or a goal, to turn to someone for help, or to go about on errands: A alergat toată ziua după acte.^[5][1]
4. To wander from place to place, and (popular, transitive) to roam a place.^[5]
5. To compete in a running race.^[5][3]

Word family

• alerg
• alergaci
• alergat
• alergăriște
• alergătură
• alergău
• alergător
• alergare

Related words

• larg
• Aromanian alag
• Latin largus

Usage notes

An old proverb plays on the verb: Scumpul mai mult păgubește, leneșul mai mult aleargă “the miser loses more, the idler runs more”.^[12] A alerga într-un suflet means “to come running, out of breath”.^[15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s 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. alerga
3. ^ a b c d e f g 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. alerga
4. ^ a b c d Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 352
5. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 27
6. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1963), Etimologii romînești, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. s.v. alerga
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 77
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 164
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, 106
10. ^ 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 147:4
11. ^ 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 61:4
12. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. alerga
13. ^ a b Academia Republicii Populare Romîne (1958), Dicționarul limbii romîne moderne, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1, 20
14. ^ a b 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. alerg
15. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. alerga