deplasa

Forms

deplasa (third-person singular present deplasează, past participle deplasat), first conjugation^[1] An old, rare variant deplața is the form of the first record: „s-a deplațat prin degagementul gazului” “it was displaced by the release of the gas”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French déplacer (“to move, displace”).^{[2][4][5][6][1]} The French verb is formed on place (“place; square”), from Latin platea (“broad street; public square”) through a form plattea, probably influenced by *plattus (“flat”); the Latin noun comes from Ancient Greek πλατεῖα (plateîa), the feminine of πλατύς (platús, “broad”) used as a noun.^[2] Graur groups it with plasa, piață, plat and platou, all from the same Greek and Latin words.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR and Tiktin date the first record to 1852, a work by Marin, where the variant deplața is used of air displaced by a gas.^[2][4][3]

Semantic evolution

The first sense was physical: to move something, or to shift from its place.^[3][4] The reflexive soon came to mean going somewhere, and in the 20th century in particular a trip on official business, as with a judge who goes to the scene of a crime.^[2][8] Figurative uses followed: to turn a debate to another question, or a shift of interest or attention.^[6][3] The participle deplasat gained the sense “out of place, unseemly”, recorded from 1859–1869 in Heliade-Rădulescu.^[2]

Timeline

• 1852 – first record, as deplața, in a work by Marin.^[2][4]
• 1859–1869 – the participle deplasat in Heliade-Rădulescu.^[2]
• 1877 – deplasabil “movable”, in the Austrian imperial law gazette.^[2]
• 1906 – deplasament, later the nautical term “displacement”, in Alexi's dictionary.^[2]
• 1946 – deplasa in Camil Petrescu's plays, MDA2's first record.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To move something or someone from one place to another; to shift.^[5][6]
2. (reflexive) To move from the original position; to slip or be dislocated.^[5][6]
3. (reflexive) To go somewhere, especially on official business: Echipa s-a deplasat la Cluj pentru meci.^[5][6]
4. (figurative) To turn a discussion to another question.^[6]

Word family

• deplasabil
• deplasament
• deplasat
• deplasare

Related words

• muta
• plasa
• piață
• plat
• platou

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, 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. deplasa
3. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. deplasa
4. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. deplasa
5. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 291
6. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 647
7. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică
8. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne