cumineca

Forms

cumineca (third-person singular present cuminecă, past participle cuminecat), first conjugation^[1] Old texts have cumeneca, and the texts with rhotacism cumereca;^[2] cuminica is an old and regional variant.^[2][3] The DA quotes să ne cumerecămu “let us take communion” from a text of 1619.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *comminicō (“to give communion”), a popular form of Latin commūnicō (“to share, communicate”), which the Church writers used for taking communion.^[5][6][7][4] The Latin verb is formed on commūnis (“common”).^[5][8] Candrea and Densusianu explain the vowel by assimilation to the verbs in ⟨-icare⟩.^[9]

The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian cumnic and Megleno-Romanian cuminic.^[6][1] The popular Latin form also lives on in northern Italian, Old French, Occitan and Catalan, the classical form in Spanish and Portuguese: Occitan comenegar, Old French comengier, Spanish comulgar, Portuguese comungar.^[5][10] Albanian kungoń is another descendant of the Latin verb.^[6][9] Cihac derived the Romanian verb from Slavonic, which Ciorănescu considers impossible.^[6] It is a doublet of the neologism comunica.^[6][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the form cuminecară in Coresi's Psalter of 1570, at Psalm 105:28, repeated in the later psalters;^[11] DELR and Tiktin date the word by the same verse in the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578).^[11][5][3] The noun cuminecătură “communion” is recorded earlier, in Coresi's Apostle of 1566.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The central sense has always been to give or to receive the sacrament of communion.^[4][7] In the old language the reflexive also meant to share in something, to belong to a church or be initiated into a faith, and to agree or be united with someone: Dosoftei writes of those who are not in communion with the holy catholic church.^[2][3] DELR takes the old sense “to communicate” as a learned use after the Latin verb.^[5] A rarer transitive use, to have a sin forgiven through communion, appears in Coșbuc.^[4][3] In Muntenia and Moldavia împărtăși is also used for communion.^[3]

Timeline

• 1566 – cuminecătură “communion” in Coresi's Apostle.^[5]
• 1570 – cuminecară in Coresi's Psalter (Psalm 105:28).^[11]
• c. 1573–1578 – the same verse in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[5][3]
• 1619 – the rhotacized cumerecămu.^[4]
• 1679 – cumenecăciune “communion” in Dosoftei.^[5]
• 1686 – cuminecat, the abstract noun, in Dosoftei's Lives of the Saints.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. (Christianity, reflexive and transitive) To receive or to give communion, the Eucharist: Credincioșii s-au cuminecat în ziua de Paști.^[7][2]
2. (transitive) To have a sin or a fault forgiven through communion.^[7]
3. (obsolete) To share in something; to agree, to be united with someone; to communicate.^[2][5]

Word family

• cuminecat
• cuminecăciune
• cuminecătură
• cuminecare

Related words

• comunica
• împărtăși

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 570
3. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. cuminecá
4. ^ 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. cuminecá
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. cumineca
6. ^ 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. cumineca
7. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 259
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. cumineca
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2090
11. ^ a b c 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 105:28