jos

Forms

jos adverb; adjective jos m or n (feminine singular joasă, masculine plural joși, feminine and neuter plural joase).^[1] In Moldavian and in old texts the word is often spelled gios: „Șezând lepădat gios” “lying cast down” (1777).^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin diōsum,^[1] a popular form of Latin deorsum (“downwards”) that is also recorded as deosum.^{[3][4][2][5][6]} The Latin word was formed from dē- and vorsum, the old form of versum (“turned”).^[1] The development of /di/ to /ʒ/ is the same as in ajunge and ajuta.^[3] Cipariu and Scriban derived it from a popular *jossum, but Ciorănescu prefers the form with ⟨deo-⟩.^[3][7]

The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian gios, Megleno-Romanian jos and Istro-Romanian žos.^[3][8][9] The Aromanian form, which Meyer found hard to explain, is regular if the etymon is the form with ⟨deo-⟩, as Aromanian agiunge shows.^[3] Romance cognates include Italian giuso, Old French jus and Old Spanish ayuso.^[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The psalter index first finds jos in Coresi's Psalter of 1570 (Psalm 77:19).^[10] Tiktin quotes it from the Codicele Voronețean (16th century, Acts 20:9).^[11] MDA2's first record is Coresi's Carte de învățătură of 1581, where it is opposed to sus “up”: „Cealea ce-s sus, josă face-le” “the things that are high, he makes them low”.^[4][12]

Semantic evolution

The adverb “down, below, on the ground” is the original use.^[12][3] As an adjective it came to mean “low” in height, of land lying in a valley, and of a voice or note, and later in physics of low temperature, pressure or frequency.^[5][11] A figurative sense “low, base, of humble origin” gave josnic “mean, base” and înjosi “to humiliate”.^[11][3] Josean was a name for the people of Lower Moldavia.^[3] As an interjection jos! calls for the fall of someone: Jos tiranii! “Down with the tyrants!”^[11]

Timeline

• 1570 – in Coresi's Psalter.^[10]
• 1581 – in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[4][12]
• 1633 – „și jos la pământ zac” “and they lie down on the ground”, in a prayer book.^[12]
• 1777 – the Moldavian spelling gios.^[2]

Meanings

Adverb

1. down, below: near or at the level of the ground; in a lower place than another: Cartea a căzut jos.^[5][1]
2. On the ground, at someone's feet;^[5] pe jos “on the ground” or “on foot”.^[5]
3. (interjection) Used as a command to sit down, or to call for the overthrow of someone.^[5][11]

Adjective

1. low: not high above the ground; short.^[5][1]
2. Of land, lying low, in a valley; by extension marshy.^[5]
3. Of a voice or a musical sound, low, deep.^[5]
4. (physics) Of temperature or pressure, low; of a frequency, with few periods per unit of time.^[5]

Word family

• josean
• josime
• josnic
• josnicie
• înjosi
• înjositor
• prejos

Related words

• sus
• Aromanian gios
• Latin deorsum

Usage notes

Common phrases: a (se) da jos “to get down, to take down”;^[5] de sus până jos “from top to bottom, entirely”;^[5] cu capul în jos “head down”;^[5] a privi pe cineva de sus în jos “to look down on someone”.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. jos
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. jos
4. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1287
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 567
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2566
7. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 717
8. ^ Popovici, Iosif (1909), Dialectele romîne din Istria II: texte și glosar, Halle a. S., p. 118
9. ^ Kovačec, August (1998), Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik (s gramatikom i tekstovima), Pula
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 77:19
11. ^ 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. jos
12. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. jos