gusta

Forms

gusta (third-person singular present gustă, past participle gustat, third-person subjunctive guste); 1st conjugation^[1] In Maramureș the verb has the present gustez and means “to have lunch”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin gustō (“to taste”).^[3][4][5][1] Pușcariu, Candrea–Densusianu, the REW and the DA take it straight from the Latin verb, while Ciorănescu treats it as a derivative of the noun gust, itself from gustus (“a taste”).^[6] The verb survives in all four branches: Aromanian gustu, Megleno-Romanian gust and Istro-Romanian gust.^[6][7] Its Romance cognates include Italian gustare, French goûter, Catalan gustar and Portuguese gostar.^[8] The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *ǵews- (“to taste”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the form gustară “they tasted” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century (Psalm 105:28).^[9] MDA2 dates the word from the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), which has „Nemică se nu gustămu” “let us taste nothing”, in the oath of the men who meant to kill Paul.^[3][2] The sense in both is “to take food or drink, to taste”.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The verb first meant taking a little food or drink, either to try its flavour or to stave off hunger.^[2] Later it came to mean simply “to eat”.^[4] The Bible of 1688 already uses it figuratively, „Carii nu vor gusta moarte” “who shall not taste death”.^[10][5] The senses “to enjoy, to have a share of” and “to appreciate, to like” followed, and Ciorănescu ascribes the last to the model of French goûter.^[6][4] In Maramureș the verb means “to have lunch”, and the derived noun gustare means a light meal and, in Moldavia, Transylvania and the Banat, lunch.^[2][11][6] The REW notes the same sense “midday meal, breakfast” in nouns from the Latin verb in Sardinian and Corsican.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – gustară “they tasted” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[9]
• c. 1563-1583 – gustămu in the Codicele Voronețean.^[3][2]
• 1570 – gustați “taste!” in Coresi's psalter (Psalm 33:8).^[12]
• 1660 – gusta glosses Slavonic въкусит in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[13]
• 1688 – „Carii nu vor gusta moarte” in the Bucharest Bible.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To taste: to take a little of a food or drink to find out its flavour.^[4][3][1]
2. To eat or drink a little, to stave off hunger or thirst for a while; by extension, to eat.^[4][3]
3. (regional, Maramureș) To have lunch.^[3][11]
4. (figurative) To enjoy, to have a share of something: A gustat câteva zile de liniște.^[4]
5. (figurative) To appreciate, to like.^[4][14]

Word family

• gustare
• gustări
• dezgusta

Related words

• gust
• Aromanian gustu

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. gusta
3. ^ 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, 1033
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. 1, 455
5. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. gusta
6. ^ 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. gust
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 509
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3926
9. ^ 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 105:28
10. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Mt 16:28
11. ^ a b Ștef, Dorin (2021), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din județul Maramureș, 3rd ed., Baia Mare, p. s.v. gustá
12. ^ 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 33:8
13. ^ 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. gusta
14. ^ Academia Republicii Populare Romîne (1958), Dicționarul limbii romîne moderne, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. s.v. gusta