culege

Forms

culege (present culeg, third-person singular culege, past participle cules, subjunctive culeagă), 3rd conjugation^[1][2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin colligō (“to gather together”), a pan-Romance verb.^[3][4][2][1] The Latin verb is a compound of con- and legō (“to gather, collect”).^[3][5]

The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian culeg, Megleno-Romanian culegu and Istro-Romanian culeje.^[4][3][6] Its Romance cognates include Italian cogliere, French cueillir, Catalan collir, Spanish coger and Portuguese colher.^[4][7]

The learned sense “to deduce, conclude” is a later calque: DELR takes it from the New Latin philosophical use of the Latin verb, itself modelled on Ancient Greek συλλέγω (sullégō).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, of about 1500–1520, in Psalm 91.^[3][8] Tiktin's first quotation is the Psaltirea Scheiană's verse on the vine whose fruit every passer-by gathers (Psalm 79).^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

The oldest sense is picking fruit, flowers or crops from the plant, and DA notes that it is used above all of grapes.^[3][10] Tiktin's example shows the contrast with shaking fruit down: plums are picked, apples are shaken off the tree.^[9] From picking came gathering things up from the ground and collecting in general, so that culegere became “a collection, anthology” in 1828.^[3][4] In Transylvania the learned sense “to deduce” appeared.^[4][3] With printing the verb took the sense “to set type”, and culegător “collector” also came to mean “typesetter”.^[4][3][2]

The noun cules “harvest, vintage” is recorded from 1582, culegător from about 1650.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – first record, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[3][8]
• 1582 – cules “gathering, harvest”.^[3]
• c. 1650 – culegător “gatherer”.^[3]
• 1660 – culeg in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon, glossing Slavonic words for gathering fruit and harvesting the vine.^[11]
• 1828 – culegere “collection, anthology”, in Heliade-Rădulescu's grammar.^[3]
• 1857 – culegătoreasă “woman harvester”.^[3]
• 1923 – culegar “composing stick”, a typographic term.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To pick or harvest cereals, fruit, flowers and the like.^[2][12][1]
2. (figurative) To win, obtain (applause, praise and the like).^[2]
3. To pick something up from the ground.^[2][12]
4. To collect, bring together.^[2][12]
5. (printing) To typeset: to take the letters from the type cases and set them in the composing stick.^[2][3]
6. (Transylvania, dated) To deduce, conclude.^[4][3]

Word family

• culegar
• culegătoreasă
• culegătorie
• culegău
• culegere
• cules
• reculege
• culegător

Related words

• alege
• Aromanian culeg

Usage notes

A culege pe cineva de pe drumuri is to take in someone down and out, and the saying alege până culege is said of someone so choosy that he ends with the worst share.^[2][12]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 257
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r 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. culege
4. ^ 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. culege
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. colligō
6. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 323
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2048
8. ^ 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 91:14
9. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. culege
10. ^ 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. culege
11. ^ Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro
12. ^ 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, 568