detesta

Forms

detesta (present detest, rarely detestez; third-person singular detestă; past participle detestat), first conjugation^[1][2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French détester, which DELR, MDA2, the DLR and Tiktin give as its only source.^[3][1][4][5] DEX, the neologism dictionaries and Wiktionary add Latin dētestārī.^[6][7][2] Pontbriant in 1862 derived it from the Latin verb alone.^[8]

The French verb first meant “to curse”; it was borrowed from the Latin one, “to ward off by calling the gods to witness, to curse”, formed of dē- and testor (“to call to witness”), from testis (“witness”).^[3][9] DELR traces the noun for witness to a form built on trēs (“three”), the witness being a third party beside the two sides of a lawsuit.^[3] Graur lists the verb with atesta, contesta and protesta in the same family.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is in Laurian in 1846, in the sense “to dislike, to loathe”;^[3][5] Tiktin also dates it to 1846.^[3][5] Negulici's vocabulary of 1848 has it as detestare “to hate someone or something”, with both present forms, detest and detestez.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In French the verb had already weakened from “to curse” to “to dislike” by the 16th century.^[9] Romanian took it with the later sense: the DLR's quotations, from the 19th century to Sebastian and Camil Petrescu, all mean “to despise, to be unable to stand”.^[4] The reflexive is used of people who cannot stand each other, or of someone who despises himself.^[6][12] The present detestez, used by Caragiale, is now rare beside detest.^[12][1]

The family came in at the same time: detestabil (1847) and detestație (1848) are from French, and detestator is recorded in Laurian and Massim (1871).^[3]

Timeline

• 1846 – first record, in Laurian.^[3][5]
• 1847 – detestabil “hateful”, in Heliade-Rădulescu.^[3]
• 1848 – detestare and detestație in Negulici's vocabulary.^[11][3]
• 1862 – Pontbriant: “to hate, to abhor”.^[8]
• 1871 – detestator in Laurian and Massim.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To detest, to be unable to stand someone or something; to despise deeply: Detest minciuna. “I detest lying.”^[6][1]
2. (reflexive, reciprocal) To be unable to stand each other.^[6]

Word family

• detestabil
• detestație
• detestator

Related words

• atesta
• contesta
• protesta
• Latin testis

References

1. ^ 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, 682
2. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
3. ^ 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. detesta
4. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. detesta
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. detesta
6. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 304
7. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. detesta
8. ^ a b Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 217
9. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 101
11. ^ a b Negulici, I. D. (1848), Vocabular romînesc de toate vorbele streine întroduse pînă acum în limba romînească și de toate cuvintele ce s-ar mai putea introduce încă, București, p. s.v. detesta
12. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 88