distruge

Forms

distruge (third-person singular present distruge, past participle distrus, third-person subjunctive distrugă), 3rd conjugation^[1] Negulici's vocabulary of 1848 has the variants destruge and destrui, and distrui is an old, rare variant.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Italian distruggere (“to destroy”), as Ciorănescu, DEX, Tiktin and the neologism dictionaries give it.^[4][5][6][7] DELR explains the Italian ⟨gg⟩: the Italian verb continues Latin dēstruō (“to pull down, destroy”), remade after its perfect distrussi and participle distrutto on the model of pairs such as leggere, reggere.^[2][8] The Latin verb is formed on struō (“to arrange, build”).^[2] MDA2 names French détruire beside the Italian verb, and DELR takes the variants destrui and distrui from the French verb, with an ⟨s⟩ restored after the Latin.^[3][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is Negulici's vocabulary of neologisms of 1848, where it already means “to destroy”, to make something stop existing.^[2][3][6]

Semantic evolution

The concrete sense, to wreck a building or a thing by breaking, burning or pulling it down, is the first one the dictionaries give; Șăineanu still put “to pull down a building” first in 1929.^[9][5] From it came the figurative senses: to ruin someone's health, fortune or peace of mind, and, used reflexively, to ruin oneself.^[5][3] MDA2 also records the senses “to injure” said of parts of the body, and “to kill” said of living beings.^[3]

Romanian made its own derivatives: distrugător “destroyer, destructive”, autodistrugere “self-destruction” (1929, after French autodestruction) and autodistruge (1957).^[4][2] Most of the learned family, destructibil, destrucție and distructiv, came separately from French or Latin.^[2][4]

Timeline

• 1848 – distruge, with the variants destruge and destrui, in Negulici's vocabulary, where destructibil and destructor appear too.^[2][6]
• 1929 – autodistrugere “self-destruction”, in Zarifopol.^[2]
• 1957 – autodistruge “to destroy oneself”.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To destroy: to make something cease to exist by breaking, burning or pulling it down; to annihilate, to ruin.^[5][3][1]
2. (transitive, of the body) To injure badly.^[3]
3. (transitive) To kill; to crush.^[3]
4. (figurative, transitive and reflexive) To make someone lose, or to lose, all one's health, fortune or peace of mind.^[5][3]

Word family

• autodistruge
• autodistrugere
• distrugător

Related words

• destructibil
• destrucție
• distructiv
• indestructibil
• Italian distruggere

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. distruge
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 732
4. ^ a b c 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. distruge
5. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 323
6. ^ 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. distruge
7. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. distruge
8. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
9. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 214