exprima

Forms

exprima (third-person singular present exprimă, past participle exprimat) 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French exprimer and Latin exprimō (“to press out; to represent”), one of the neologisms with two sources in Romanian dictionaries.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The Latin verb is formed on premō (“to press”).^[2] French took it as a learned word in the 14th century, remaking older forms such as espriemer.^[6] The same Latin verb survives in Romanian as the inherited screme, and south of the Danube as Aromanian sprimeare.^[1][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR and DLR date the first record to 1794, in a calendar printed in Vienna, where a woman, given leave to speak, se exprima așa “expressed herself thus”.^[2][8]

Semantic evolution

Before the spelling settled, DELR records many forms: esprima, espreme, esprime, exprema, expreme, sprime and the hybrid exprimălui of Samuil Micu (c. 1800).^[2] The verb means to put thoughts and feelings into words, to render them through art, and to show a state of mind by gestures or the face; said of words and symbols, to mean something.^[2][3] Biology added the sense of a gene showing itself in the phenotype.^[2] The family came in from French at the same time: expresie in 1785, expresiv in 1833 and inexprimabil in 1848.^[2]

Timeline

• 1794 – se exprima in a Vienna calendar, the first record of the verb.^[2][8]
• c. 1800 – the variant exprimălui in Micu.^[2]
• c. 1832 – exprimător “expressing”, in I. Golescu.^[2]
• 1840 – exprimabil.^[2]
• 1848 – inexprimabil, in Negulici.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To express, set out or show opinions, ideas or feelings in words or gestures.^[3][4][1]
2. (reflexive) To express oneself, to put something into words.^[3][9]
3. To render feelings or ideas by artistic means, such as music or painting.^[4][2]
4. (biology) Of a gene: to show itself in the phenotype.^[2]

Word family

• expresie
• expresiv
• exprimabil
• inexpresiv
• inexprimabil
• neexprimabil
• exprimare

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. exprima
3. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1, 373
4. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 864
5. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. exprima
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. exprima
9. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. exprima