fire

Forms

fire f (plural firi)^[1] Old texts and some dialects have hire: Miron Costin writes of buffaloes that „pre hirea sa ... cum au văzut apa, cum au năvălit în apă” “true to their nature, they rushed into the water as soon as they saw it”.^[2]

Etymology

It is the long infinitive of the verb fi “to be”, formed from Romanian fi + -re and used as a noun.^[3][4][1][2] The verb continues Latin fierī, which replaced esse as the infinitive of “to be”.^[4]

Ciorănescu remarks that the sense “nature” has not been well explained, and compares Ancient Greek φύσις (phúsis, “nature”), formed on φύω (phúō, “to grow”).^[4] Tiktin compares the old sense “menstruation” with an obsolete use of German Natur, and the old sense “of good quality, noble” in a phrase with French de qualité.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The noun appears in the earliest Romanian psalter: the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, of the early 16th century, has the articled form firea.^[5] Tiktin's first record is the Psaltirea Scheiană, and MDA2 cites the Palia de la Orăștie (1582), where the earth is to bring forth living creatures „după firea sa” “after its kind”.^[2][3] The first sense is thus “nature, kind”, the way a thing is made.^[2]

Semantic evolution

From “being, the way a thing is” the word came to mean the nature of a thing and then nature as a whole, the created world and its creatures; in 1648 Năsturel wrote that he who has not tasted what is cannot grasp „firea celor ce nu sunt” “the nature of what is not”.^[2][3] The Slavonic–Romanian lexicons of the 17th century use it to render the Slavonic word for “nature, essence”.^[6] Applied to people it came to mean temperament and character (iute la fire “quick-tempered”, slab de fire “weak-willed”), and then the mind and self-possession, the sense of the many phrases a-și ieși din fire, a-și veni în fire, a-și ține firea.^[2][7][3]

Old Romanian also used de-a firea for a person or thing of high rank or quality: the Pravila of 1646 distinguishes a man of low birth from an „om de-a firea”.^[2] A Moldavian sense “menstruation” (a fi la fire) is recorded by Damé and Scriban and marked old by MDA2.^[8][9][3] The adverbial phrase peste fire moved from “supernatural” in old texts to “extraordinarily, beyond measure”.^[2][3][7]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – firea in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[5]
• 1570 – firea in Coresi's psalter.^[10]
• 1582 – „după firea sa” “after its kind” in the Palia de la Orăștie.^[3][2]
• 1646 – om de-a firea “a man of rank” in the Pravila.^[2]
• 1648 – firea “nature” in Năsturel.^[2]
• 1649 – Mardarie's lexicon glosses Slavonic “nature” with the word.^[6]
• 1688 – firea in the Bucharest Bible.^[11]
• 1825 – „Ce schimbate la ei firi!” “how different their characters are!” in Mumuleanu.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The natural world around us; nature.^[7] Peste fire: extraordinarily, beyond measure.^[7][3]
2. The mental and moral make-up of a being: character, temperament: E un om blând din fire.^[7][3]
3. mind, reason; composure.^[7] În toată firea: grown up, in full possession of one's faculties.^[7][3]
4. (obsolete) A being, a creature.^[3][2]
5. (obsolete, regional) menstruation.^[3][8]

Word family

• firesc
• firește
• nefiresc

Related words

• firetic
• fi
• ființă

Usage notes

The noun is the centre of many expressions: a-și veni în fire “to come to one's senses”, a scoate pe cineva din fire “to drive someone mad”, a-și ține firea “to keep one's composure”, a se pierde cu firea “to lose one's head”.^[7] The spelling fire is also the plural of fir “thread”.^[1] An old optative of fi, identical in form, survives in curses such as fire-ai and fire-ar.^[4]

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 Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. fire
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 908
4. ^ 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. fi
5. ^ 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 144:9
6. ^ a b 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. firea
7. ^ 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. 396
8. ^ a b Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État
9. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 509
10. ^ 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 109:5
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Daniel 7:15