greși

Forms

greși (third-person singular present greșește, past participle greșit) 4th conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic грѣшити (grěšiti, “to sin”), a verb of the Slavonic church language.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The Old Church Slavonic verb renders Ancient Greek ἁμαρτάνω (hamartánō) “to sin” in the old texts.^[6] It comes from Proto-Slavic *grěšiti, formed on *grěxъ (“sin”).^[1] Vasmer connects the noun, though not with certainty, with *grěti (“to warm, heat”), as if “the burning of conscience”.^[7]

Ciorănescu and the DA compare Bulgarian греша (greša), Serbo-Croatian griješiti and Russian грешить (grešitʹ).^[2][5][8] The verb also reached the Romanian of the south: Ciorănescu lists Aromanian agãrshescu and Megleno-Romanian grișos.^[2] Papahagi gives the Aromanian verb the senses “to forget” and “to fall asleep” and derives it from the same Slavonic verb in the sense “to go astray”.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are in the 16th-century psalters: the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (early 16th century) has greşim “we have sinned” and greşiţi.^[10][11] The sense there is religious, “to sin”, as in Coresi's psalter of 1570, „Ție unuia greșii” “against thee alone have I sinned”.^[5][12] MDA2 dates its first record to the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), where the apostle says he did no wrong „nece întru leagea iudeiască, nece întru besearecă” “neither against the law of the Jews nor against the temple”.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

The DA orders the senses from “to sin against God” to “to wrong someone” and then to “to be mistaken” and “to miss”.^[5] It notes that Bulgarian has the senses “to err” and “to lose one's way” too, and Old Russian, Ukrainian and Slovene the sense “to miss”, so they need not have grown in Romanian.^[5] Ciorănescu adds an old sense “to fall into sin”, said of women, and MDA2 records it in the regions for girls who had a child outside marriage.^[2][3]

The reflexive a se greși “to slip, to do what one did not mean to” is a popular use quoted from Ispirescu and Sbiera.^[13] In Maramureș a se greși means “to forget”: storytellers who lost the thread said „amu greșesc”.^[14] This matches the Aromanian sense “to forget”.^[9] The proverb Cine întreabă nu greșește “he who asks does not go wrong” is old.^[15][13]

Romanian formed the noun greșeală “mistake”, the adverb negreșit “certainly” and the agent noun greșitor “offender” on the verb.^[2] Greș “mistake”, recorded before 1633, is a derivative of the verb for MDA2;^[3][2] Ciorănescu also cites Bogrea's view that it is Serbo-Croatian greš.^[3][2]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – greşim “we have sinned” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[10]
• c. 1563–1583 – greșiiu in the Codicele Voronețean.^[3][5]
• 1570 – greșii “I have sinned” and greșesc in Coresi's psalter.^[12][16]
• before 1633 – the noun greș “mistake”.^[3]
• 1649 – greșesc in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon, for Slavonic погрѣшаю.^[17]
• 1688 – the Bucharest Bible uses the infinitive greși 84 times.^[18]
• 1925 – a se greși “to forget” recorded in Maramureș.^[14]

Meanings

Verb

1. To make a mistake, to err; by extension, to be mistaken: Am greșit la socoteală.^[4][3]
2. To miss the target: Arcașul n-a greșit ținta.^[4][3]
3. To do something wrongly; to take one thing for another, to confuse;^[4][3] a greși drumul “to lose one's way”.^[4][3]
4. To be at fault towards someone, to wrong someone; by extension, to sin: Cu ce v-am greșit noi?^[4][5]
5. (reflexive, popular) To slip, to do what one did not mean to.^[13]

Word family

• greș
• greșeală
• negreșit
• greșit
• greșitor

Related words

• Aromanian agãrshescu
• Old Church Slavonic грѣшити (grěšiti)

Usage notes

Old texts also have a variant agreși.^[2] The old verb preagreși “to sin” was modelled on Slavonic prĕgrĕšiti.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. greși
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1022
4. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 450
5. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. greși
6. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
7. ^ Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress
8. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite
9. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 64
10. ^ 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 105:6
11. ^ 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 24:9
12. ^ 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 50:5
13. ^ a b c Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 413
14. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1925), Graiul și folklorul Maramureșului, București: Cultura Națională, p. 221
15. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. greși
16. ^ 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 38:1
17. ^ 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. greșesc
18. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gen 39:9