grăbi

Forms

grăbi (third-person singular present grăbește, past participle grăbit), 4th conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic грабити (grabiti, “to seize, to rob”), as DER, MDA2 and Wiktionary give it.^[2][3][1] DEX, NODEX and DLRM name the Bulgarian verb instead: Bulgarian грабя (grabja).^[4][5][6] In the Euchologium Sinaiticum and the Codex Suprasliensis the Old Church Slavonic verb means “to seize, rob” and renders Ancient Greek ἁρπάζω (harpázō).^[7] It continues Proto-Slavic *grabiti (“to seize, grab”).^[8][1]

Ciorănescu notes that none of the Slavic derivatives has it; the shift from seizing to haste looks natural to him, as in Latin rapidus (“swift”) from rapiō (“to snatch”), but it is found only in Romanian.^[2] Tiktin calls the Slavic etymology doubtful in its meaning and adds that, if it is right, the noun meaning “haste” is a back-formation from the verb.^[9] BER, however, records a Bulgarian dialect verb гра̀бим (grabim, “to hurry”) from the Belogradchik area beside the standard verb meaning “to take quickly, to seize”.^[10] Ciorănescu compares grabă and greblă.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to about 1550.^[9] MDA2's first record is Mihail Moxa's chronicle of 1620.^[3] A Slavonic–Romanian lexicon of about 1660 has grăbesc, and the Bucharest Bible of 1688 uses the verb often, from Genesis on.^[11][12]

Semantic evolution

In the old language the verb was also used without the reflexive pronoun for “to hurry”: a Book of Hours of 1715 has grăbește “make haste” in Psalm 69, and a folk ballad says of the builders Meșterii grăbea “the masters hurried”.^[9] Dosoftei sometimes construed it with the dative.^[9] Transitive uses meant “to press someone”: Neculce writes that the Wallachians kept pressing a prince for money, îl tot grăbea de bani.^[9] The intransitive use still occurs in modern writers such as Sadoveanu.^[13]

Today the verb is mostly reflexive, a se grăbi “to hurry”, and transitive “to hasten, speed up”.^[4][1] A third sense is “to act rashly”, close to a se pripi.^[4][3] Of the sun, it can mean “to ripen fruit early”, as in a folk verse about cherries ripened in the shade, de nu-s grăbite de soare.^[3][9] Pontbriant's dictionary of 1862 gives French hâter, presser for the transitive verb and se dépêcher for the reflexive.^[14]

Timeline

• c. 1550 – the first record Tiktin cites.^[9]
• 1620 – Mihail Moxa's chronicle.^[3]
• c. 1660 – grăbesc in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[11]
• 1688 – many forms in the Bucharest Bible.^[12]
• 1715 – intransitive grăbește in a Book of Hours.^[9]
• 1801 – grăbesc “to hasten” in Klein's dictionary.^[15]
• 1862 – transitive and reflexive uses in Pontbriant.^[14]

Meanings

Verb

1. (reflexive) To hurry, make haste, quicken one's movements: Se grăbea să prindă trenul.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To make someone act faster, to urge on: Nu mă mai grăbi!^[4][3]
3. (transitive) To make something happen sooner, to hasten or accelerate it.^[4][5]
4. (reflexive) To act too hastily, without thinking: Nu te grăbi cu răspunsul.^[4][3]
5. (transitive, of the sun) To make fruit or plants ripen early.^[3]

Word family

• grabă
• degrabă
• grăbitor
• grabnic
• grăbnicie
• grăbit

Related words

• greblă

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. grăbi
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1018
4. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 448
5. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. grăbi
6. ^ Academia Republicii Populare Romîne (1958), Dicționarul limbii romîne moderne, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
7. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
8. ^ Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. grăbi
10. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 1, 269
11. ^ 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
12. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Facerea 24:19
13. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
14. ^ a b Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 291
15. ^ Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 367