dezbina

Forms

a dezbina (third-person singular present dezbină, past participle dezbinat), 1st conjugation^[1] Older and regional forms are dejghina, dezghina, desghina and dejdina, the last a literary rendering of Transylvanian dejghina.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *disglūtinō (“to unglue”), from glūtinō (“to glue”), from glūten (“glue”).^{[2][4][5][3][1]} DELR traces the sound changes to the old form dejghina, with /ɡʎu/ > /ɡʎi/ as in înghiți; the form with ⟨b⟩ was remade after îmbina, ⟨ghi⟩ being taken for the regional pronunciation of ⟨bi⟩, and it is recorded only from 1809.^[2] Its cognate Aromanian dizgljinari “to cut off branches” keeps the older consonants.^[6][1]

Ciorănescu calls the origin unknown: the word looks old, and Latin, but he finds that etymon hard to accept, as well as Giuglea's Vulgar Latin *disglinō from Ancient Greek γλίνη (glínē, “glue”).^[6][2] Tiktin thought it probably formed like combīnō on bīnī (“two each”), and Densusianu and Philippide proposed *disbīnō; the REW derives it from that verb, and Graur counts both as Romanian formations.^[7][2][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is the Bucharest Bible of 1688, in the form dejghina.^[2] Tiktin's first record is Maior's lexicon of 1785, and MDA2 cites Iacov's Synopsis of 1757.^[7][3]

Semantic evolution

The concrete sense came first: “to split into parts, to break off, to come apart”, still regional, as in a folk song: „Mare vânt că și-o suflat, Mândră creangă și-o desghinat” “a great wind blew and broke off a fine branch”.^[5][2] Applied to people it came to mean “to set at odds, to sow discord”, now the main sense.^[2][4] Regional senses are “to dislocate (a hip)”, “to spread the legs wide”, and in north-eastern Oltenia “to toil, to wear oneself out”.^[2][3]

Timeline

• 1688 – dejghina in the Bucharest Bible, the first record.^[2]
• 1699 – the noun dejghinare “discord”.^[2]
• 1757 – in Iacov's Synopsis.^[3]
• 1780–1801 – dejghinătură in Micu.^[2]
• 1785 – in Maior's lexicon.^[7]
• 1809 – the first form with b.^[2]
• 1818 – dezbinător, also of punctuation marks “separating”.^[2]
• 1881 – the regional rășghina “to spread the legs”, in Jipescu.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive and reciprocal) To set people at odds, to make them fall out; to become estranged, to quarrel.^[4][1]
2. (reflexive, rare) To come apart, to separate, to break off.^[4][1]
3. (regional) Of a hip, to be dislocated; of the legs, to spread wide.^[3]
4. (regional, Oltenia, figurative) To toil hard.^[3]

Word family

• dezbinare
• dezbinător
• dezbinătură
• răzghina

Related words

• îmbina
• combina
• Aromanian dizgljinari

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 m n o 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. dezbina
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, 692
4. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1, 307
5. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. dezbina
6. ^ a b 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. desghina
7. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. dezbina
8. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 39