câștiga

Forms

câștiga (third-person singular present câștigă, past participle câștigat, third-person subjunctive câștige; 1st conjugation)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin castīgō (“to reprimand, to punish; to restrain”), which Ciorănescu derives from castus (“pure, chaste”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} The other Romance languages kept the senses of correcting and punishing: Italian castigare, Occitan castigar, Spanish castigar and Portuguese castigar, and French châtier.^[3][4] DELR traces the Romanian meaning through “to bring up, educate” and “to take care of” to “to obtain, gain”.^[2] Wiktionary starts from the Latin sense “to correct, improve”.^[1] Ciorănescu points to Skok's study of the change and to Sardinian castigare, which meant “to preserve” in old texts.^[3]

South of the Danube there is the noun Aromanian cãshtigã (“care, worry, attention”) and a verb meaning “to look after, to be watchful”.^[6][7][2] Ciorănescu rejects Candrea's view that Serbo-Croatian kaštiga (“punishment”) was borrowed from Romanian.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1560, and DELR to 1561.^[8][2] In Coresi's Tetraevanghel of 1561 it renders the Greek “to acquire” (Matthew 6:28) and means “to buy”, the sense in the 1688 Bible's story of Joseph: „și-l câștigă pre dânsul Pentefri” “and Potiphar bought him” (Genesis 39:1).^[8][9] MDA2 gives the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The old senses of care and upbringing live on in the regions: in Transylvania and Banat it means “to bring up children” and “to take care of”, and the reflexive meant “to take trouble, to worry” or “to get ready”.^[2][10][1] In the Apuseni Mountains the reflexive means “to take communion”, and in Transylvania and Banat “to complain”, which the DA explains as “to punish oneself”, then “to bring oneself grief”.^[9][2] The sense “to buy” still lives in Banat.^[8]

In the standard language the verb means to earn, to gain and to win: money, experience, a battle, someone's sympathy.^[5][8] The noun câștig “gain, profit” (1581) is a back-formation, and câștigător “winner” is recorded from 1649.^[2] The Moldavian variant câșlig was discussed by Graur.^[3][2]

Timeline

• 1560 – the first record, according to Tiktin.^[8]
• 1561 – “to buy” in Coresi's Tetraevanghel.^[8][2]
• c. 1573–1578 – in the Psaltirea Scheiană, MDA2's first record.^[10]
• 1581 – the noun câștig “gain”.^[2]
• 1649 – câștigător “winner, one who gains”.^[2]
• 1651 – the regional noun câștigă “care” and the verb încâștiga “to worry, to toil”.^[2]
• 1688 – “to buy” in the Bucharest Bible (Genesis 39:1).^[8]
• 1857 – recâștiga “to win back”.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To earn money or goods by work, trade or gambling; by extension, to gain experience or knowledge; to make up for lost time.^[5][1]
2. To win someone over, to gain someone's sympathy or support.^[5][8]
3. To win a contest, a battle, a game or a lawsuit.^[5][1]
4. Intransitive: to gain in quality, content or weight, to improve.^[5]
5. (regional) To bring up a child; to take care of.^[2][1]

Word family

• câștig
• câștigătură
• câștigos
• recâștiga
• câștigător

Related words

• Aromanian cãshtigã
• Latin castīgō

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 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. câștiga
3. ^ a b c d e 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. cîștiga
4. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1746
5. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 165
6. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 280
7. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 270
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. câștiga
9. ^ a b 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. câștiga
10. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 347