băga

Forms

băga (third-person singular present bagă, past participle băgat, third-person subjunctive bage), 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

Its origin is unknown: DEX calls it of unknown etymology, and DELR uncertain.^[2][3] The word is old, since it is found south of the Danube too: Aromanian bag and Megleno-Romanian bag, both meaning “to put (in)”.^[4][5][6][7]

Several origins have been proposed.^[3][7] G. Meyer and the REW start from a Romance stem Vulgar Latin *baga (“bag, pack”), seen in Occitan baga and Old French bague (“baggage”), with a verb “to put in a bag” that became “to put in”, and DELR gives this first.^[3][7] DA, Pușcariu and Russu think it a word of the pre-Roman substrate, comparing a Bulgarian verb meaning “to put in, push, touch” that has no Slavic etymology; no fitting Indo-European root has been found.^[3][4] Ciorănescu derives it from Vulgar Latin *bīgō (“to yoke”), from bīgae (“a pair of yoked animals”), taking the phrase ⟨a băga în plug⟩ “to yoke to the plough” as the first sense.^[7][1] DELR rejects this on phonetic grounds: the forms south of the Danube would have kept an ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩.^[3] Other proposals are Avram's *imbagō “to put into a hollow”, Boerescu's vagor (“to wander”), Giuglea's Late Latin *baugō (“to put in fetters”), from a Langobardic word for “ring”, Hasdeu's *vadō, and Cihac's Modern Greek βάζω (vázo, “to put”);^[3][7] Ciorănescu and DELR find none of them convincing.^[3][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century.^[3] Tiktin dates the word from Neacșu's letter of 1521.^[8] MDA2 gives the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583).^[9]

Semantic evolution

The central sense has always been “to put into, to make enter”, as in the Bible of 1688: „nimeni nu bagă vinul nou în foi vechi” “no one puts new wine into old wineskins” (Mark 2:22).^[8][2] Reflexively it means “to go in” and, figuratively, “to meddle”: Unde nu-ți fierbe oala, nu-ți băga lingura “don't put your spoon where your pot isn't boiling”.^[8][2] Other senses are “to place someone in service” and “to invest money”, and the reflexive “to take a job”.^[2][4]

Ciorănescu reconstructs an older order of senses: “to yoke animals”, then “to subdue, to force”, and only later “to put in”.^[7] Wiktionary records the yoking and forcing senses as archaic.^[1] The phrase a băga de seamă “to pay attention” gave the Transylvanian adverb bagsamă, later basama “probably”, recorded from 1802.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – the first record, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[3]
• 1521 – in Neacșu's letter.^[8]
• c. 1563–1583 – in the Codicele Voronețean.^[9]
• 1649 – băga in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[10]
• 1688 – the noun băgat in the Bucharest Bible.^[3]
• 1691–1697 – băgăcios, then “manageable”, in Teodor Corbea's dictionary.^[3]
• 1802–1803 – bagsamă “probably”.^[3]
• 1923 – băgăreț “meddlesome”, in Arghezi.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To put in, to make enter.^[2][1] (reflexive) To go in, to enter: Bagă cheile în buzunar.^[2][1]
2. (reflexive, figurative) To meddle, to interfere: a-și băga nasul “to poke one's nose in”.^[2][1]
3. (transitive and reflexive) To place, to invest (money); to take or give a job: S-a băgat paznic la depozit.^[2]
4. A băga de seamă, a băga seama: to pay attention, to notice.^[2] A băga în seamă: to take notice of.^[2]
5. (archaic) To yoke animals; to force, to subdue.^[7][1]

Word family

• basama
• băgat
• băgăcios
• băgăreț
• băgător
• băgătură
• băgare

Related words

• Aromanian bag

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 93
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. băga
4. ^ a b c 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. băga
5. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
6. ^ Saramandu, Nicolae (coord.) et al. (2010–), Dicționarul dialectului meglenoromân, general și etimologic, fascicles in Fonetică și dialectologie XXIX–
7. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. băga
8. ^ 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. băga
9. ^ 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, 174
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. băga