despărți

Forms

despărți (third-person singular present desparte, past participle despărțit, third-person subjunctive despartă), 4th conjugation.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin dispartiō (“to divide, distribute”), a variant of dispertiō remade on pars (“part”);^[2][3][4][1] DELR notes that the variant is recorded in Latin glossaries.^[2][3][4][1] DEX and Romanian Wiktionary mark the Latin form as unattested.^[5][6] It is formed from Latin dis- + partiō.^[1]

Ciorănescu disagrees: he lists the verb among the Romanian derivatives of the noun for “part”, and so did the first edition of Tiktin.^[7][2] By surface analysis it is des- + parte + -i.^[1]

The verb survives in all four branches: Aromanian dispartu, Megleno-Romanian dispărțǫri and Istro-Romanian resparți, the Istro-Romanian form with the prefix regularly replaced.^[2][8][9] Its Romance cognates are Italian dispartire, French départir, and Spanish despartir and Portuguese despartir.^[2][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century.^[3][11] Where other psalters say God opened the sea and let the people pass through, this one has despărți “he divided”.^[4][11]

Semantic evolution

The oldest sense is to divide a whole into parts or to set things apart from one another, which the old texts also use for “to distinguish”.^[4][12][3] Tiktin quotes Nicolae Costin: „Domnii cei buni de cei răi cu aceasta se despart” “by this the good princes are told apart from the bad ones”.^[12] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 has the verb in the Gospel line on marriage: „omul să nu desparță” “let not man put asunder”.^[12]

The reflexive took the senses “to part from someone”, “to break up” and “to divorce”, and figuratively “to grow apart” and “to give up something”.^[5][2] Roads and rivers that fork are also said to divide (se despart).^[3][2] An old mathematical sense, “to divide” a number, has gone out of use.^[3][2]

The family grew early: despărțeală is recorded in 1581 and despărțenie “divorce” in 1657.^[2] Despărțământ (1842) “department, section” was formed after French département and German Abteilung.^[2]

Timeline

• early 16th century – desparte and despărți in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[3][13]
• 1551–1553 – in the Slavonic–Romanian Gospel book, at Matthew 13:49.^[12]
• 1570 – despărți in Coresi's Psalter.^[14]
• 1581 – despărțeală “separation” in Coresi's Gospel homilies.^[2]
• 1649 – the participle despărțit in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[15]
• 1657 – despărțenie “divorce; difference”.^[2]
• 1688 – „omul să nu desparță” in the Bucharest Bible.^[12]
• 1842 – despărțământ “department, section”.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (reflexive) To part from someone or something and go elsewhere, for a time or for good; of a group, to split up and go different ways.^[5][16]
2. (reflexive, figurative) To become estranged from someone, or to give up something one is attached to.^[5]
3. (reflexive) To divorce.^[5][1]
4. (transitive) Of a barrier or obstacle, to separate or isolate: Un pârâu desparte cele două sate. “A stream separates the two villages.”^[5]
5. (transitive and reflexive) To divide into two or more parts.^[5][16]

Word family

• despărțământ
• despărțeală
• despărțenie
• despărțit
• despărțitură
• despărțire
• despărțitor
• nedespărțit

Related words

• împărți
• parte
• Aromanian dispartu
• Latin dispartiō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. despărți
3. ^ 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, 669
4. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. despărți
5. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 300
6. ^ Wikționar (Romanian Wiktionary), ro.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. despărți
7. ^ 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. parte
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 398
9. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. despărți
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2679
11. ^ 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 77:16
12. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. despărțí
13. ^ 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 45:8
14. ^ 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 21:20
15. ^ 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. despărțit
16. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. despărți