destul

Forms

destul (feminine destulă, masculine plural destui, feminine and neuter plural destule)^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian de + sătul (“full, sated”), a phrase that became one word.^{[2][3][1][4][5][6]} In the phrase the adjective is used as a noun, “satiety, plenty”, a use kept in old phrases meaning “to one's fill”.^[2] The adjective is from Latin satullus (“sated”), a diminutive of satur.^[2][7] Ciorănescu compares de ajuns “enough”, built the same way.^[3]

DELR dates the phrase very early, perhaps to the Latin of the Danube, because the southern dialects show the same loss of the vowel: Aromanian distul, also distúr, and Megleno-Romanian dustúr.^[2][8][9] DELR explains their /r/ as probably due to the influence of the Aromanian reflex of the Latin adjective.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is the early 16th-century Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, in Psalm 121:6–7.^[2][10] Tiktin and MDA2 cite it first from the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), Acts 19:19.^[5][4]

Semantic evolution

In the old language destul was also a noun meaning “plenty” and “contentment”, and the adjective meant “content”: the Bible of 1688 has Destui fiți cu câștigurile voastre “Be content with your wages” (Luke 3:14).^[2][4][5] The adverb took the senses “much, a lot” and, before an adjective with de, “fairly, rather”: destul de bine “fairly well”.^[1][4] As an exclamation it means “Enough! Stop!”.^[3][1]

The old language had the variants îndestul (Coresi, 1566) and desătul, and the verb îndestula “to satisfy” is recorded from 1688.^[2] Ciorănescu holds that Bulgarian дестур (destur) comes from Romanian; the Bulgarian etymological dictionary instead takes it from Turkish destur “permission”.^[3][11]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[2][10]
• c. 1563-1583 – in the Codicele Voronețean.^[4][5]
• 1566 – îndestul in Coresi.^[2]
• 1648 – the verb destuli “to satisfy” in the New Testament of 1648.^[2]
• 1649 – in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon, glossing Slavonic words for sufficiency.^[12]
• 1688 – îndestula “to satisfy” in the Bucharest Bible.^[2]
• c. 1815 – îndestulător “sufficient” in Budai-Deleanu.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. enough, sufficient: as much as is needed.^[1][4][6]
2. Many, much, a good deal of;^[1][4] (neuter plural, as a noun) many things: A îndurat destule. “He has been through a lot.”^[1][4]

Adverb

1. Enough, sufficiently; more than enough.^[1][4]
2. (as an interjection) Enough! Stop!^[1][4]
3. destul de + adjective or adverb: fairly, rather, relatively: destul de bine “fairly well”, destul de rău “rather bad”.^[1][6]

Word family

• destula
• îndestul
• îndestula
• îndestulător
• neîndestulător

Related words

• sătul
• Aromanian distul

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 302
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. destul
3. ^ a b c d 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. destul
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 677
5. ^ 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. destúl
6. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7620
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 400
9. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 122
10. ^ 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 121:7
11. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 1, 348
12. ^ 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. destul