hrăni

Forms

hrăni (third-person singular present hrănește, past participle hrănit), 4th conjugation^[1] Popular and regional variants are hărăni and arăni, the latter recorded in Oltenian folk poetry.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic хранити (hraniti, “to guard, keep, protect”), the Old Church Slavonic verb, which is from Proto-Slavic *xorniti.^{[5][3][4][2][1]} The Proto-Slavic verb is formed on the noun *xorna, the source of Romanian hrană “food”.^[1][5] Vasmer reports the comparison of the Slavic word with Latin servō (“to save, keep”).^[6]

The Slavonic verb meant “to guard, preserve”; the sense “to feed” is that of the South Slavic languages, Bulgarian храня (hranja, “to feed; to keep”) and Serbo-Croatian hrániti (“to feed, keep, preserve”).^[7][8][9] Ciorănescu compares Russian хранить (hranitʹ, “to keep”) and regards the old Romanian sense “to protect” as a literary loan from Slavonic.^[5]

The verb also exists south of the Danube: Aromanian hrănescu (“to feed”) and Megleno-Romanian rănes (“to feed, keep”).^[5][10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, at Psalm 32:19 and in two further psalms.^[12] The Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583) uses the participle for a man brought up in a city, „hrănitu întru aceasta cetate”, where the 1648 New Testament and the 1688 Bible have crescut “raised”.^[7] MDA2 dates the word to the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578).^[3]

Semantic evolution

In the Psaltirea Scheiană the verb still renders the Slavonic sense “to guard, keep”.^[13] This sense survives only in old texts, while “to feed, nourish” and “to keep, provide for, raise (children)” are the main senses from the 16th century on.^[7][3] The Slavonic–Romanian lexicons of the later 17th century gloss hrănesc with Slavonic verbs for feeding.^[14] The 1688 Bible has „Și te-au hrănit cu mana” “and he fed thee with manna” (Deuteronomy 8:3).^[2][15]

The figurative sense “to nurture, cherish (a feeling)” is old: Antim Ivireanul warns against nursing enmity in one's heart, „să nu hrănească vrajba în inima lui”.^[7] Later extensions are “to feed (a threshing machine) with sheaves” and, reflexively, “to earn one's living”; in Moldavia the reflexive also meant “to eat one's fill”, and of wine “to grow strong with age”.^[3][2][4]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – hrăni in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[12]
• c. 1563-1583 – the participle hrănitu “brought up” in the Codicele Voronețean.^[7]
• c. 1573-1578 – the Psaltirea Scheiană, still with the sense “to guard”.^[3][13][2]
• c. 1660 – hrănesc and hrănit in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[14]
• 1688 – 23 occurrences of the infinitive and many other forms in the Bucharest Bible.^[16]
• 1709-1716 – the figurative “to nurse (enmity)” in Antim Ivireanul.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To feed, to give food to; reflexive: to eat, to live on (something); to nourish.^[4][3][1]
2. To keep, provide for; to raise (children) or rear (animals).^[3][7]
3. (figurative) To nurture or cherish a feeling, a hope, a dream.^[2][17]
4. To feed a threshing machine with sheaves.^[3][2]
5. (reflexive, regional, of wine) To grow strong with age.^[4][3]
6. (obsolete) To guard, protect.^[3][13]

Word family

• hrănire
• hrănitor
• nehrănit

Related words

• hrană
• Aromanian hrănescu
• Old Church Slavonic хранити (hraniti)

Usage notes

The expression a se hrăni cu vânt, literally “to feed on wind”, means to have nothing to eat or to eat very little.^[4][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. hrăní
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, 1089
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. 481
5. ^ 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. hrană
6. ^ Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress, p. 4, 273
7. ^ a b c d e f g 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. hrăni
8. ^ Trubačev, Oleg N.; Žuravlev, Anatolij F.; Varbot, Žanna Ž. (eds.) (1974–2021), Ètimologičeskij slovar' slavjanskix jazykov: praslavjanskij leksičeskij fond, vols. 1–42, Moskva: Nauka, p. 8, 78
9. ^ Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 205
10. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 562
11. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 245
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 32:19
13. ^ a b c Candrea, I.-A. (1916), Psaltirea Scheiană comparată cu celelalte psaltiri din sec. XVI și XVII traduse din slavonește, vol. II: Glosarele, București: Socec, p. 304
14. ^ 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. hrănesc
15. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. A doua leage 8:3
16. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Facerea 45:7
17. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 471