dezlega

Forms

dezlega (third-person singular present dezleagă, past participle dezlegat, third-person subjunctive dezlege) 1st conjugation^[1] Older texts spell it deslega: Alecsandri writes „ea mă deslegă pe mine din salbă” “she untied me from the necklace”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin disligō (“to untie”), formed from dis- (“apart”) and ligō (“to tie, bind”).^{[4][3][5][6][7][1]} The REW gives the Latin verb as a reconstruction.^[7] Wiktionary notes that it is attested in the Reichenau Glossary.^[7][1] Ciorănescu and Wiktionary also allow a formation within Romanian from dez- and lega, which is the DLR's explanation.^[6][1][2]

It survives in all four branches: Aromanian dizleg, Megleno-Romanian disleg and Istro-Romanian dezlegu.^[6][8][9] Its Romance cognates include Italian slegare, French délier, Catalan deslligar, Spanish desligar and Portuguese desligar.^[6][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The infinitive dezlega is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century (Psalm 101:21).^[10] Tiktin finds it in the Codicele Voronețean (Acts 22:30), which also has „mită da-se-va lui de la Pavelu se-lu dezleage elu” “that a bribe would be given him by Paul to release him”.^[5][2] MDA2 cites Coresi's prayer book of 1564.^[3] The sense was “to untie, set free”.^[5][2]

Semantic evolution

From untying bonds and knots the verb passed to the release from an obligation: the church “binds and looses” (a lega și a dezlega, 1669), absolves sins and dispenses from a fast, as in a dezlega postul.^[5][4] Old texts also used it of abolishing a tax.^[5] A riddle, a problem or a dream can be “untied”, that is solved or interpreted, as in a folk poem collected by Alecsandri: „Curând visul mi-l dezleagă” “interpret my dream for me soon”.^[5][4]

Several expressions use it: a dezlega limba “to make someone talk”, a dezlega sacul “to tell everything one knows”, a dezlega punga “to spend money”, and regionally a dezlega iapa (calul) de la gard “to speak out openly”.^[4][3][5] The reflexive once meant “to divorce”.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – dezlega in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[10]
• c. 1551-1558 – dezleagă in the Psaltirea Voronețeană.^[11]
• 1564 – Coresi's prayer book.^[3]
• 1649 – dezleg in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[12]
• 1669 – a lega și a dezlega “to bind and to loose”, of the apostles.^[5]
• 1688 – dezlega in the Bucharest Bible.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. To untie: to open something by undoing what ties it; to undo a knot.^[4][3][1]
2. To free from bonds, and (reflexive) to get free: a(-i) dezlega limba “to loosen someone's tongue”.^[4]
3. To release from an obligation or an oath, and (Christianity) to absolve of sins.^[4][1]
4. To solve a problem, a riddle or an enigma; to decipher an illegible writing.^[4][1]

Word family

• dezlegare
• dezlegător
• dezlegătură

Related words

• lega
• Aromanian dizleg
• Latin ligō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. dezlega
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, 697
4. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 308
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. dezlega
6. ^ 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. deslega
7. ^ a b c d Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2672
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 406
9. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 107
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 101:21
11. ^ 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 145:6
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. dezleg
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Genesis 27:40