glumi

Forms

glumi (third-person singular present glumește, past participle glumit) 4th conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian glumă (“joke”) + -i: DA, DER and MDA2 take it from the noun.^[2][3][4] DEX derives it instead from the Slavonic verb Old Church Slavonic глоумити (glumiti), comparing the noun, and Wiktionary gives both explanations.^[5][1] The DA compares the Slavonic verb, which meant “to chatter, to mock”, Bulgarian глумя се (glumja se) and Serbo-Croatian glumiti se.^[2]

The noun is from Old Church Slavonic глоумъ (glumŭ), according to Ciorănescu.^[3] The verb goes back to Proto-Slavic *glumiti, a denominative of *glumъ.^[1] Derksen gives the meanings of the Old Church Slavonic verb as “be distracted, talk idly”.^[6] Ciorănescu calls the old senses of the verb, “to occupy oneself” and “to backbite”, literary loans from Slavonic that never circulated in speech.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The 16th-century psalters have the verb, first the past tense glumiră in Coresi's Psalter of 1570, in Psalm 118:85.^[7] The Psaltirea Scheiană, MDA2's first record, uses the reflexive a se glumi to translate Slavonic poglumiti sę in the sense “to exercise oneself”;^[4][2][8] Coresi has „Întru începutele tale glumi-mă-voiu” “I will exercise myself in thy precepts”, in Coresi's wording.^[4][2][8]

Semantic evolution

The old reflexive senses followed the Slavonic text of the psalms: “to exercise oneself” and, in Coresi's Psalter, “to chatter, to speak ill of someone”.^[2][8] The everyday sense “to joke, to jest” is the one of the chronicles and of folk poetry, and of Alecsandri and Ispirescu.^[2][8] In the 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons glumesc glosses the Slavonic word for mocking.^[9]

With a negation it came to mean “to be in earnest”, and of a person “to show no mercy”: Dumnezeu nu glumește “God does not jest” is quoted from Antim.^[2] DEX records a nu glumi cu “to take seriously; to make no concession” and nu-i de glumit cu “it must be taken seriously”.^[5] The Apuseni Mountains have the variant glumbi.^[2][4]

Timeline

• 1570 – glumiră in Coresi's Psalter, Psalm 118:85.^[7]
• c. 1573-1578 – glumi-mă-voiu in the Psaltirea Scheiană, MDA2's first record.^[4][8]
• 1649 – glumesc in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[9]
• 1688 – glumind in the Bucharest Bible, Genesis 26:8.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To joke, to jest; to say something not meant seriously: Nu te supăra, am glumit.^[5][1]
2. a nu glumi cu: to take seriously; to show no leniency towards: Cu sănătatea nu se glumește.^[5][4]
3. (obsolete, reflexive) To exercise oneself; to chatter, speak ill of someone.^[4][2]

Word family

• glumeț

Related words

• glumă

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română (1913–1949), Dicționarul limbii române (DA), ed. Sextil Pușcariu, tom I (A–B, C, D–De) and tom II (F–I, J–Lojniță), București: Socec / Universul / Monitorul Oficial și Imprimeriile Statului; page scans at cflr-scans.solirom.ro, p. s.v. glumi
3. ^ 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. glumă
4. ^ 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, 1006
5. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 443
6. ^ Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill
7. ^ 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 118:85
8. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. glumi
9. ^ 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. glumesc
10. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Genesis 26:8