ales

Forms

ales m or n (feminine singular alesă, masculine plural aleși, feminine/neuter plural alese)^[1]

Etymology

It is from Romanian alege (“to choose”), the verb's past participle used as an adjective and noun.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} alege continues Latin allegō (“to choose”), a variant of ēligō.^[6][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1437, before the first Romanian texts.^[5] DELR's first record is the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (c. 1500–1520), with both the adjective “remarkable” and the noun “one chosen by God”.^[4] That psalter has the articled forms alesul “the chosen one” and aleșii “the chosen ones”.^[8][9]

Semantic evolution

From “chosen, picked out” the adjective came to mean “choice, of the first quality”, then “distinguished, noble, exquisite”, and of fabrics “worked with flowers or patterns”.^{[2][3][10][5]} The old language also used it for “clear, evident, precise”, and of estates for “with fixed boundaries”.^[2][10] As a noun it named a village notable and, in religious use, the elect of God; in modern use aleșii are those elected by vote, and the articled alesul, aleasa is the person one marries.^[10][4][3]

The comparative phrase mai ales, literally “more chosen”, became the adverb “especially, above all”: Varlaam (1643) already uses it, and Creangă writes of onlookers, especially the boys, laughing until they fainted.^[10][3] The negative neales “without exception” is old too.^[5]

Timeline

• 1437 – first record, according to Tiktin.^[5]
• c. 1500–1520 – the adjective and the noun “the chosen one” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[4][8]
• c. 1563–1583 – in the Codicele Voronețean, MDA2's first record of the adjective.^[2]
• 1643 – mai ales “especially” in Varlaam's Cazania.^[10]
• 1649 – ales renders Slavonic “chosen, excellent” in Mardarie's lexicon.^[11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. chosen, picked out from others or from a whole.^[3][2][1]
2. elected by vote, often as a noun: aleșii poporului “the people's elected representatives”.^[3]
3. distinguished, remarkable, choice, rare or precious: un oaspete ales.^[3][2]
4. (of fabrics) Woven with flowers or patterns.^[3]

Noun

1. (articled) The beloved, the person one marries: alesul inimii.^[3]

Adverb

1. mai ales: especially, above all, in particular.^[3][10]

Related words

• alege
• alegere

Usage notes

A separate neuter noun ales “choosing, sorting out” (DEX ales¹), formed from the same verb, is recorded from 1581 in Coresi according to DELR, while MDA2's first record is of 1697.^[4][2][3] It survives in the phrases pe ales(e) “special” and pe ales(e) or într-ales “at one's choice”, and in shepherds' speech it names the spring sorting of the ewes from the lambs.^[2][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d 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” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 40
3. ^ 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. 28
4. ^ a b c d e 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. alege
5. ^ 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. ales
6. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 39
7. ^ Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 9
8. ^ 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 88:19
9. ^ 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 104:42
10. ^ 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. ales
11. ^ 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. ales