bea

Forms

bea (present beau, third-person singular bea, past participle băut, subjunctive să bea or regional să beie), second conjugation.^[1][2] The regional subjunctive beie occurs in a curse recorded by Pamfile: „Bea-te-ar șerpii, să te beie!” “may the snakes drink you up!”^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin bibō (“to drink”), a verb inherited by all the Romance languages.^{[5][6][7][8][1]} The Latin verb comes from Proto-Indo-European *píph₃eti (“drinks”), with its first ⟨p⟩ assimilated to the ⟨b⟩ inside the word; it is related to Ancient Greek πίνω (pī́nō).^[9][1]

It survives in all four branches: Aromanian beau, Megleno-Romanian bęu and Istro-Romanian beut.^[6][10][11] Its Romance cognates include Italian bere, Occitan beure, French boire, Spanish beber and Portuguese beber.^[6][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is from about 1418, in a Slavo-Romanian document.^[4] DELR dates the first Romanian text to about 1500, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[5] The Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563) has the sense “to drink”: „Nece se mărânce, nece se bea, pâră când nu vor ucide Pavel” “neither to eat nor to drink until they had killed Paul”.^[3][7]

Semantic evolution

From “to drink” the verb came to mean “to drink alcohol”, “to be a drinker” and “to spend on drink”: și-a băut banii “he drank away his money”.^[2][4] Figuratively one drinks the cup of suffering, and in an old text a snake comes to drink a child's blood.^[3][4] A bea tutun “to drink tobacco” meant to smoke;^[6][12] Ciorănescu calls it a translation of the Turkish and Greek phrases for smoking, and Șăineanu explains that Oriental smoking was more sipping than inhaling.^[6][12]

In Moldavia the forms tend to lose the diphthong: beu, să bee.^[6] The derivatives go back to the earliest texts: beutură “drink” is recorded about 1500, beutor “drinker” in 1551–1553.^[5] For băutor and băutură Pușcariu and the REW reconstruct Latin *bibitōrius and *bibitūra; others take them as Romanian formations on the participle băut.^[5][6]

Timeline

• c. 1418 – in a Slavo-Romanian document, the first record.^[4]
• c. 1500 – in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, with beutură “drink”.^[5]
• 1551–1553 – beutor “drinker”.^[5]
• c. 1563 – in the Codicele Voronețean.^[7][3]
• 1573–1578 – bere “drinking” in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[5]
• 1682 – băut “drinking” and nebăut “sober” in Dosoftei.^[5]
• 1688 – bea in the Bucharest Bible.^[13]
• 1870 – băuturică “a little drink”.^[5]
• 1934 – băubil “drinkable” in Arghezi.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To drink: to swallow a liquid.^[2][1]
2. To drink alcohol; to be a drunkard.^[2][14]
3. To celebrate someone with drinks: a bea în sănătatea cuiva “to drink to someone's health”.^[2][7]
4. To spend money or property on drink.^[2]
5. (popular) a bea tutun: to smoke.^[2]
6. To suck, sip.^[7]

Word family

• băut
• băutor
• băutură
• băuturică
• băubil
• nebăut

Related words

• beat
• Aromanian beau
• Latin bibō

Usage notes

A bea paharul până-n fund “to drain the cup to the bottom” means to bear a misfortune to its end.^[2] MDA2 and the DA also have an interjection bea, a variant of behehe, and a noun bea, a variant of băl “fair-haired”.^[7][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 98
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. bea
4. ^ 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. bea
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. bea
6. ^ 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. bea
7. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 193
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1074
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 193
11. ^ Saramandu, Nicolae (coord.) et al. (2010–), Dicționarul dialectului meglenoromân, general și etimologic, fascicles in Fonetică și dialectologie XXIX–, p. 75
12. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 60
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Facerea 24:14
14. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. bea