cerca

Forms

cerca (third-person singular present cearcă, past participle cercat, third-person subjunctive cerce), first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin circō (“to go round, encircle”), formed on circa (“around”) and circus (“circle”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} The same verb gave Italian cercare, French chercher, Occitan cercar, Catalan cercar, Spanish cercar and Portuguese cercar, and Sardinian has kirkare.^[2][6][7] Ciorănescu also compares Albanian kërkoj (“to seek”).^[2][6]

The DA notes that the verb is lost south of the Danube.^[8] încerca, whose uses overlap with it, is taken from Vulgar Latin *incircare by Candrea–Densusianu and the DA, but Ciorănescu thinks it a Romanian derivative.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Psaltirea Ciobanu (c. 1573–1585) has the form cercară at Psalm 104:44.^[9] Tiktin's first record is from 1581.^[10] The DA notes that the verb cannot be found in the Codicele Voronețean, the Hussite psalters or Coresi.^[8] In the 17th century it was common in Moldavia and Transylvania in the sense “to seek”: a text of 1646 has „Iată, trei bărbați te cearcă pre tine” “behold, three men are seeking thee”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The DA starts from the Latin sense “to go round, make a circuit”.^[8] Old Romanian kept it in the legal phrases a cerca hotarele and a cerca semnele, to walk the bounds of an estate and check its boundary marks.^[4][8] From going round came the senses “to examine, investigate, inquire”, “to seek an alliance”, “to raid a country” and “to search for”, which is the usual sense of the old texts.^[4][8][10] Ciorănescu points to Pușcariu's study of these senses in Dacoromania IV.^[2]

The senses “to try, to test” and “to strive” are folk ones, as in Alecsandri's verse „Cercam vinul dacă-i rece” “I tried the wine to see if it was cool”.^[10][3] A pain or a feeling can also be the subject: in Vlahuță, „îl cerca în răstimpuri un junghi în piept” “now and then a stitch in the chest would come over him”.^[10] The literary language now prefers încerca for most of these senses.^[2] The derivatives cercător “searcher; explorer; spy”, cercătură “trial, inquiry” and cercală, the skein dipped in a dye to test it, are old or regional.^[2][6]

Timeline

• c. 1573–1585 – cercară in the Psaltirea Ciobanu (Psalm 104:44).^[9]
• 1581 – Tiktin's first record.^[10]
• 1646 – cearcă “seeks” in a text quoted by the DLRLV.^[11]
• c. 1660 – cerc glosses Slavonic “I seek” in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[12]
• 1688 – the Bucharest Bible uses cerca 124 times, first at Genesis 37:22.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (popular) To examine, inspect, spy out; intransitively, to ask, to inquire.^[3][4][1]
2. (popular, also reflexive) To strive, to try to do something.^[3]
3. (popular) To try out, to test whether something is good or fits.^[3]
4. (dated, regional) To look for, to seek.^[3][11]
5. (dated) To put through hard trials.^[3]
6. (regional) To visit, to frequent.^[3]
7. (popular, intransitive) To come back; to prowl around.^[3]
8. (impersonal) Of a pain or a feeling, to come over someone.^[3][10]

Word family

• cercător
• cercală
• cercat
• cercătură
• cercare

Related words

• cerc
• cerceta
• încerca

Usage notes

In old texts the verb meant chiefly “to seek”, the sense now expressed by căuta.^[11][10] The present has the diphthong ea when stressed: cearcă, cerce.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. cerca
3. ^ 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. 171
4. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 362
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1938
6. ^ a b c Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București
7. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. cercare
8. ^ 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. cerca
9. ^ 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
10. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. cerca
11. ^ a b c d Costinescu, Mariana; Georgescu, Magdalena; Zgraon, Florentina (1987), Dicționarul limbii române literare vechi (1640–1780): termeni regionali, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică
12. ^ Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Facerea 37:22