curăța

Forms

curăța (third-person singular present curăță, past participle curățat, third-person subjunctive curețe), first conjugation^[1] Beside the first-conjugation curăța, a popular variant of the fourth conjugation, curăți, is common in older and folk texts.^[2][3] Bălcescu wrote that, hating the Turks' tyranny, they all rose „și curățiră țara lor de dânșii” “and cleared their country of them”.^[4]

Etymology

It is from Romanian curat (“clean”), with the ⟨ț⟩ of the masculine plural ⟨curați⟩.^{[3][2][5][4][1]} DELR lists it in the family of the adjective,^[6] and Ciorănescu among the derivatives of the old verb cura (“to clean”).^[7]

The adjective is the past participle of that verb, which comes from Latin cūrō (“to take care of”), itself from cūra (“care”).^[6][8] The sense of cleaning is found elsewhere in Romance as well, in French curer and in Venetian curare (said of cleaning a chicken), and Catalan escurar.^[7][6] Pușcariu proposed cōlō (“to strain, to filter”) as the only source, which DELR rejects, since no Romanian form has a stressed /o/; the DA and Ciorănescu hold that the two Latin verbs merged in Romanian.^[6][7] The adjective survives in all four branches: Aromanian curat, Megleno-Romanian curat and Istro-Romanian curåt.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the verb, in the form curăți, to the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, where roPsalt finds it at Psalm 77:42.^[6][9] MDA2 gives its first record from the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), and Tiktin cites the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[5][4] The sense in these texts is to make clean or pure.^[6][4]

Semantic evolution

From “to make clean” the verb came to mean removing whatever is unwanted: peeling fruit, eggs or vegetables, clearing land of trees and roots, and getting rid of a person or a thing.^[2][6][4] In church language it means to purify oneself of sins and to be saved.^[2][4] The old phrase a-și curăța obrazul meant to clear oneself of blame: Neculce writes of boyars who blamed the Muscovites and „își curățiau obrazele” “cleared their own names” by saying they knew nothing.^[4][5]

Colloquial senses go further: to kill (and, reflexive, to die), to strip someone of their money (Alecsandri's folk poems have a curăța de averi “to clean out of one's wealth”) and to steal.^[2][4] Old and popular texts use it for healing a skin disease, and regional speech for castrating an animal and for a cow expelling the afterbirth.^[5][6]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – curăți in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[6][9]
• c. 1563–1583 – the Codicele Voronețean, MDA2's first record, also the first text with the noun curățit.^[5][6]
• 1570 – Coresi's psalter, Psalm 17:26.^[10]
• 1581 – curățitor “one who cleans” in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[6]
• 1582 – curățenie “cleanness, cleaning” in the Palia de la Orăștie.^[6]
• 1688 – the Bucharest Bible uses curăți more than a hundred times.^[11]
• 1926 – curățătorie “cleaner's shop” in Galaction.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To clean: to remove dirt or impurities from something or from oneself.^[2][5][1]
2. To peel fruit, vegetables or eggs.^[2][1]
3. (popular) To heal, or to be healed, of a skin disease.^[2][5]
4. (technical) To remove roughness, deposits or waste material from a part, an object or a piece of land, and so to clear land of trees.^[2][1]
5. (figurative) To rid someone of something bad, and reflexive, to get rid of something.^[2][1]
6. (religious, reflexive) To be purified and saved.^[2][5]
7. (colloquial) To kill, and reflexive, to die.^[2][1]
8. (colloquial) To strip someone of all their money, and reflexive, to be left without a penny.^[2][5]

Word family

• curățenie
• curățătorie

Related words

• curat
• cura
• Latin cūrō

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 DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 262
3. ^ a b Academia Republicii Populare Romîne (1958), Dicționarul limbii romîne moderne, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
4. ^ 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. curățá
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 578
6. ^ 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. curat
7. ^ a b c 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. cura
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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, p. Ps 77:42
10. ^ 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 17:26
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ieșirea 20:7