cutremur

Forms

cutremur n (plural cutremure)^[1] Old texts also have a masculine plural cutremuri and a plural cutremururi: Dosoftei has „fulgere și cutremururi” “lightnings and earthquakes”.^[2][3][4] Mardarie's lexicon of 1649 has the spelling cutromuri: „cutromuri de pământ” “earthquakes”.^[2]

Etymology

It is a back-formation from Romanian cutremura (“to shake, tremble”), as DELR, DEX, Tiktin, the DA and Wiktionary agree.^{[5][6][3][2][1]} The verb is traced by DELR and Ciorănescu to Vulgar Latin *contremulō, formed on tremulō (“to tremble”).^[5][7] Ciorănescu also allows that it is a Romanian formation on tremura with an expressive ⟨cu-⟩.^[7] Scriban derived the noun from the verb too.^[8]

The noun survives in Aromanian as well, where it means “trembling, fright”: Aromanian cutreambur, with the syncopated form cutrem.^[5][9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the first record to the Slavonic–Romanian Gospel of 1551–1553.^[5] In the 16th-century texts it means both trembling and fear, as in the psalm verse „slujiți Domnului cu frică și vă bucurați lui cu cutremur” “serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Bible of 1688), and the shaking of the earth or sea, as in the Tetraevanghel of 1574: „iată cutremuru mare fu în mare” “behold, there was a great shaking in the sea”.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

The DA and DELR give the senses in this order: a shaking or violent movement, especially the movement of the earth, then a shudder of fear, disgust or pleasure, and by extension terror.^[2][5] The earthquake was long named with the full phrase cutremur de pământ, which Tiktin, the DA and the DLRLC record beside the bare noun.^[3][2][11] The bare cutremur for an earthquake appears in a manuscript of 1815: „în zioa a șase va fi un cutremur mare preste tot pământul” “on the sixth day there will be a great earthquake over all the earth”.^[3]

The DA notes that the old language often used the word in the plural only.^[2] The figurative sense lives on in literature: Eminescu writes of a voluptuous shudder, Sadoveanu of a shudder through a whole body.^[11]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – the verb cutremura in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[5]
• 1551–1553 – the noun in the Slavonic–Romanian Gospel, the first record.^[5]
• 1574 – cutremuru mare “a great shaking” of the sea in the Tetraevanghel.^[2]
• c. 1573–1578 – the noun in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[4][3]
• 1577 – cutremur “trembling” in Coresi's psalter (Psalm 2:11).^[12]
• 1648 – cutremurătură in the New Testament of 1648.^[5]
• 1649 – cutromuri de pământ in Mardarie's lexicon.^[2][13]
• 1688 – the noun in the Bucharest Bible (Psalm 2:11).^[3][14]
• 1691–1697 – cutremurător in Teodor Corbea's dictionary.^[5]
• 1815 – the bare noun for an earthquake in a manuscript.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. earthquake: a sudden, strong vertical, horizontal or twisting movement of the Earth's crust caused by underground shifts, volcanic eruptions and the like; a synonym of seism; also cutremur de pământ: Cutremurul a dărâmat mai multe case.^[6][4]
2. A jolt, a violent shaking.^[4][2]
3. (figurative) A shudder; by extension fear, terror, panic.^[6][4]

Related words

• cutremura
• cutremurător
• cutremurătură
• tremura
• Aromanian cutreambur

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. cutremur
3. ^ 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. cutremur
4. ^ 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, 586
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. cutremura
6. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 265
7. ^ a b 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. cutremura
8. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 384
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 345
10. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 368
11. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1, 622
12. ^ 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 2:11
13. ^ Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. cutremur
14. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ps 2:11