dezmetici

Forms

dezmetici (third-person singular present dezmeticește, past participle dezmeticit) 4th conjugation^[1] Older and popular forms are dezmeteci and dizmeteci; the 19th-century spelling was desmetici.^[2][3][4] An 18th-century text has dizmiticit: „Și dacă s-au dizmiticit Archiria” “and when Archiria had come to his senses” (1784).^[4]

Etymology

Its origin is disputed.^[2] Tiktin, the DLR, MDA2 and DEX 2009 take it as from Romanian dezmetic (“bewildered”), a variant of bezmetic.^[5][4][6][3] Since that adjective means “bewildered” and the verb means the opposite, DELR explains the shift by a confusion with dezmeți (“to come out of a daze”), possible among speakers who did not know the adjective as a variant of the other.^[2]

Pușcariu, DEX 1998 and NODEX derive it instead from Vulgar Latin *dismatticō, built on *matticō and ultimately on Latin mattus (“drunk”);^[7][8] DELR compares the Valencian verb matigar (“to tire”) and rătăci from *errāticō.^[2][7][8] Wiktionary gives the same Latin source as one possibility.^[1] Ciorănescu suggests an older *dezmântici from Vulgar Latin *deexmenticō, built on mēns (“mind”) and comparable to Italian dimenticare (“to forget”); it would first have meant “to bewilder”, like bezmetici, and later been felt as its opposite and read as an un-bewildering, on the model of face / desface and închide / deschide.^[9][2] Mărgărit's view that it is the same verb as the old one meaning “to act like a madman”, with its meaning reversed by contrast with “to bewilder”, is rejected by DELR, because the prefixes ⟨dez-⟩ and ⟨bez-⟩ do not form antonym pairs.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is in Dosoftei's Lives of the Saints (1682), after an earthquake that killed some two hundred people: „iară alalți abia să dezmeticiră” “and the others barely came to their senses”.^[2][4] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 uses it in an older sense, “to behave like a madman”: the form dezmetecească, of someone brought in “to play the madman”.^[4][6]

Semantic evolution

The old sense “to behave like a dezmetic, to go out of one's mind” is recorded in the Bible of 1688 and in the dictionaries of Pontbriant and Barcianu, but has died out.^[4][6] The sense “to come round” from a faint, a daze, drunkenness or fright has been the main one since the first record, often with din “out of”, in authors such as Odobescu, Caragiale and Ispirescu.^[4][5][10] A transitive use, “to bring someone round”, and the figurative sense “to grasp something clearly, to see one's way” are recorded too.^[2][3]

The derivative dezmeticiune “coming to one's senses” is recorded from 1688.^[2]

Timeline

• 1682 – dezmeticiră “they came to their senses” in Dosoftei's Lives of the Saints, the first record.^[2]
• 1688 – să dezmetecească “to play the madman” and the noun dezmeticiune in the Bucharest Bible.^[4][2][6]
• 1698 – the reflexive “to come to oneself” in a Menaion for September.^[5]
• 1784 – the form dizmiticit.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (reflexive) To come round, to come to oneself after a daze, a faint, drunkenness or a fright; to wake up to reality: Când s-a dezmeticit, era deja în ambulanță.^[3][2][6]
2. (transitive) To bring someone round, to sober someone up.^[3][10]
3. (figurative) To get a clear idea of something, to see one's way.^[2][3]
4. (obsolete, reflexive) To behave like a madman, to go out of one's mind.^[6][4]

Word family

• dezmeticiune

Related words

• bezmetic
• dezmeți
• bezmetici

References

1. ^ a b 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. dezmetici
3. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 309
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. dezmetici
5. ^ 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. dezmetici
6. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 698
7. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan” (1998), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române, 2nd ed., București: Univers Enciclopedic, p. 297
8. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. dezmetici
9. ^ 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. bezmetic
10. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 99