deprinde

Forms

a deprinde (third-person singular present deprinde, past participle deprins, third-person subjunctive deprindă; 3rd conjugation)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin dēprehendō (“to seize, catch; to discover”), a compound of dē- and prehendō (“to grasp, seize”).^[2][3][1][4] DELR and MDA2 write the etymon with the contracted form, Latin dēprendō, which the Latin dictionaries record beside the full one.^[2][5][6] The verb is thus a prefixed relative of prinde.^[1]

Candrea and Densusianu trace the Romanian sense to a meaning already present in classical Latin, “to grasp with the senses, to notice, to understand”, from which “habit, practice” followed easily.^[7] Its closest Romance relatives are in the Iberian Peninsula: DER compares an Old Spanish and Galician deprender, Wiktionary the Valencian (Catalan) deprendre (“to learn”).^[3][1][4] Italian apprendere and French apprendre are the same verb with another prefix.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is in a Coresi print of 1566.^[2] MDA2 dates it from the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578), at Psalm 105, where the nations “learned their works”; there the DLR quotes the Scheiană with obicniră and Coresi's psalter with deprinseră.^[5][8] The corpus of the 16th-century psalters has deprinseră in Coresi's psalter of 1589.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The old senses were “to learn” and “to teach someone something”; with cu “with” and in the reflexive it came to mean “to get used to, to become familiar with”.^[2][10] Tiktin also records a deprinde la, “to train (an animal) for something”, as of falcons trained for hunting.^[10] In north-western Oltenia, DELR notes a regional sense of animals, “to conceive”.^[2]

The 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons gloss the verb with Slavonic навыкнути “to become accustomed”, and its participle deprins with навыкнувый.^[11] The noun deprindere “habit; skill” is recorded from 1648, the old deprinsătură “learning; occupation” already in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[2]

Timeline

• 1566 – first record, in a Coresi print.^[2]
• c. 1573–1578 – the Psaltirea Scheiană, MDA2's first record;^[5][2] deprinsătură “learning” in the same text.^[5][2]
• 1581 – Tiktin's first record.^[10]
• 1589 – deprinseră “they learned” in Coresi's psalter.^[9]
• 1648 – deprindere “learning; habit” in the New Testament of that year.^[2]
• 1649 – glossed with Slavonic навыкнути in Mardarie's lexicon.^[11]
• 1688 – several forms in the Bucharest Bible, among them deprinde in Psalm 36.^[12]
• 1780–1801 – deprinzător “who learns; who teaches” in Micu's dictionary.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (reflexive and transitive) To get accustomed or to accustom someone to something, to learn or teach a habit: s-a deprins cu frigul “he got used to the cold”.^[13][1]
2. (reflexive) To become familiar with someone.^[13]
3. (transitive) To acquire knowledge or a skill in a field through study or steady practice.^[13][2]
4. (transitive) To train an animal.^[13][10]

Word family

• deprindere
• deprinsătură
• nedeprins
• deprinzător

Related words

• prinde
• Latin dēprehendō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. deprinde
3. ^ 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. deprinde
4. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2574
5. ^ 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, 648
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. 235
8. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. deprinde
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 105:34
10. ^ 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. deprinde
11. ^ a b 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. deprinde
12. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ps 36:30
13. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1, 292