apela

Forms

apela (third-person singular present apelează, past participle apelat, third-person subjunctive apeleze) 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French appeler, with Latin appellō (“to address, call upon”) as a second model: DEX, the DA and DLRM name only the French verb, while DELR, Tiktin and the neologism dictionaries give both.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} DELR explains the Latin verb as ad- with an intensive form of pellō (“to push, set in motion”), with a first meaning “to make one's way towards”.^[4]

Old texts also have the variants apelarisi, fitted into the class of verbs in -arisi, and apelălui.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1754.^[5] DELR's first record is a Vienna calendar of 1794, and MDA2's is Titu Maiorescu's Critice, where he calls on “the unchanging truth”.^[4][7][3]

Semantic evolution

Two senses came in with the word: the general “to turn to someone with a request” and the legal “to appeal against a judgment”.^[4][5] For the legal sense the old language had used alerga, literally “to run”; the DA already calls the legal use of apela rare, and later dictionaries mark it as old.^[3][8][9] The general sense took over the construction a apela la “to appeal to, to resort to”: one appeals to someone's good sense, testimony or devotion.^[3]

Apela has also come to mean “to call” on the telephone, the sense of the noun apel “a telephone call”, and in computing “to call up data”.^[1][6][4] The family followed: apelant from 1805, the noun apel, from French appel, from 1829, and apelabil from 1862.^[4]

Timeline

• 1754 – first record, for appealing to a court.^[5]
• 1794 – apela in a Vienna calendar.^[4]
• 1805 – apelant “appellant”, in the form apelanș.^[4]
• 1829 – the noun apel.^[4]
• 1862 – apelabil “open to appeal”, in Pontbriant's dictionary.^[4]
• 1867 – a apela la “to call upon” in Maiorescu's Critice.^[7][3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, with la) To appeal to someone with a request; to ask for someone's help: A apelat la prieteni când a rămas fără bani.^[2][1]
2. (intransitive, with la) To resort to something, to make use of it: a apela la forță.^[1][10]
3. (transitive, formal) To call someone on the telephone.^[1]
4. (law, dated) To lodge an appeal with a higher court against a judgment.^[2][4]

Word family

• apel
• apelabil
• apelant
• apelare
• apelat

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 53
3. ^ a b c d e 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. apela
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. apela
5. ^ 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. apelá
6. ^ a b Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. apela
7. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 79
8. ^ Academia Republicii Populare Romîne (1958), Dicționarul limbii romîne moderne, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 35
9. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan” (1998), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române, 2nd ed., București: Univers Enciclopedic, p. 51
10. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. apela