asculta

Forms

asculta (third-person singular present ascultă, past participle ascultat, third-person subjunctive asculte), first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin ascultō (“to listen”), the popular form of Classical auscultō.^[2][3][4][1] DELR explains the Classical verb as built on ⟨aus-⟩, the stem of auris (“ear”).^[2] The DELI puts the loss of the first ⟨u⟩ down to dissimilation, and the DHLF dates the popular form to the 2nd century.^[5][6]

The verb survives in all four branches: Aromanian ascultu, Megleno-Romanian ascult and Istro-Romanian ascutå.^[3][7][8] It is pan-Romance: Italian ascoltare, French écouter, Spanish escuchar, Portuguese escutar and Sardinian ascultare.^[2][9][3] Romanian later borrowed the Classical form as the medical term ausculta, a doublet.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, copied about 1500–1520.^[2] That psalter has the imperative ascultați “hearken” at Psalms 48:1 and 80:7.^[10] MDA2 and Tiktin date it from the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), where Paul asks King Agrippa to hear him patiently (Acts 26:3).^[4][11] The senses “to listen” and “to heed, obey” are both found in these first texts.^[2][11]

Semantic evolution

The double sense goes back to Latin, where auscultō meant both “to listen closely” and “to believe, obey”.^[6] The Bible of 1688 has „Ascultați cuvântul Domnului” “hear the word of the Lord” (Isaiah 1:10), and Miron Costin wrote that „mai multe în lume sfaturi bune la Domni nu se ascultă” “many good counsels are not heeded by princes”.^[11] With de it means “to obey”: a asculta de părinți “to obey one's parents”.^[1][4]

Later senses come from school, the courts and medicine: to examine a pupil orally, to hear a witness, and to listen to the chest, for which the learned ausculta is also used.^[12][4][1] The noun ascultare kept the old sense “obedience”.^[13][3]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – asculta in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[2][10]
• 1563–1583 – ascultător “listener; obedient” and ascultământ “obedience” in the Codicele Voronețean.^[2]
• 1566 – ascultătură “obedience” in Coresi.^[2]
• 1581 – the noun ascultat in Coresi's Gospel homilies.^[2]
• 1602–1613 – ascultoi “obedient” in the Leastvița.^[2]
• 1688 – neasculta “to disobey” in the Bucharest Bible.^[2]
• 1818 – ascultăciune and ascultăreț in Budai-Deleanu's lexicon.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. to listen: to strain one's hearing to catch a sound or noise;^[12][4][1] (medicine) to auscultate: Ascultă, plouă afară.^[12][4][1]
2. to pay attention to what is said, sung or played: a asculta radioul “to listen to the radio”.^[12][14]
3. to examine a pupil orally; to hear a witness in court.^[12][14][1]
4. to take into account what someone says; to grant a wish or prayer.^[12][4]
5. (transitive, or intransitive with de) to obey, to follow an order or advice: Copilul nu ascultă de nimeni.^[12][1]

Word family

• ascultământ
• ascultătură
• ascultoi
• neasculta
• neascultare
• neascultător
• ascultător
• ascultare

Related words

• ausculta
• Aromanian ascultu
• Latin auscultō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. asculta
3. ^ 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. asculta
4. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 108
5. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 163
8. ^ Kovačec, August (1998), Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik (s gramatikom i tekstovima), Pula
9. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
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 80:7
11. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. ascultá
12. ^ 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. 66
13. ^ 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. asculta
14. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. asculta