judeca

Forms

judeca (third-person singular present judecă, past participle judecat, third-person subjunctive judece) 1st conjugation^[1] Moldavian and Aromanian have giudeca: „Ani întregi m-am giudecat și nimic n-am câștiat” “for years on end I went to law and won nothing”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin iūdicō (“to judge”).^{[3][4][1][5][6]} The Latin verb is made from iūdex (“judge”), a compound of iūs (“law”) with the root of dīcō (“to say”).^[1][7]

It survives in all four branches: Aromanian giudic, Megleno-Romanian judic and Istro-Romanian judec.^[3][8][9] Its Romance cognates include Italian giudicare, Occitan jutgar, French juger, Spanish juzgar and Portuguese julgar.^[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is in the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), at 1 Peter 1:17.^[2] In the psalters it appears from Coresi's psalter of 1570.^[10] MDA2 dates it from the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578).^[4] The first sense is legal: to try a person or a case and pass sentence, and of God, to judge the souls.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

In the old language the verb also meant to rule or govern, and to condemn.^[3][5] Beside the court it came to mean forming an opinion, weighing and appraising, and in colloquial use criticising or scolding: Caragiale has Mița who „îl judecă încet și-l zgâție” “quietly lectures him and teases him”.^[2][11] The reflexive a se judeca cu cineva means “to be at law with someone”.^[2][4] Regionally it also means to act as the leader of a band of carol singers.^[4]

The old language had the compounds desjudeca “to pass sentence” and răsjudeca “to examine, to weigh”.^[6][5] Of the derivatives, judecată “judgement; trial” may also continue Latin (rēs) iūdicāta, as Candrea and Densusianu proposed, and the DA traces judecătoare “court” to Latin iūdicātōria sēdēs.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1563–1583 – in the Codicele Voronețean (1 Peter 1:17).^[2]
• 1570 – judeca and its forms in Coresi's psalter.^[10]
• c. 1573–1578 – in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[4]
• 1688 – over a hundred times in the Bucharest Bible.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. To form an opinion about someone or something after weighing the arguments and circumstances; to reason, to discern.^[11][4]
2. To assess, to rate; to consider someone as something.^[11][4]
3. (also reciprocal) To criticise, to condemn, to rebuke.^[11]
4. (law) To try a case or a person and give a ruling; by extension to settle a dispute as arbiter.^[11] Lucru judecat is a matter finally decided by a court.^[11][1]
5. (reciprocal) To be in a lawsuit with someone.^[11][2]
6. (obsolete) To rule, to govern.^[3][5]
7. (regional) To lead a band of carol singers.^[4]

Word family

• judecată
• judecător
• judecătorie
• judecătoreasă
• judecătoresc
• prejudecată

Related words

• județ
• jude
• Aromanian giudic
• Latin iūdicō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. judecá
3. ^ a b c d e f g 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. judeca
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1290
5. ^ a b c d e Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. judeca
6. ^ a b c Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București
7. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 535
9. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 161
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 50:5
11. ^ 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. 568
12. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gen 19:9