junghia

Forms

junghia (third-person singular present junghie, past participle junghiat, third-person subjunctive junghie) 1st conjugation^[1] Moldavian texts spell it giunghia: „L-au giunghiat pașa cu hangerul în pântece” “the pasha stabbed him with the dagger in the belly” (Nicolae Costin's chronicle).^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin iugulō (“to kill by cutting the throat”), with an /n/ inserted before the /g/.^{[3][4][5][2][1]} The Latin verb is formed on iugulum (“throat”).^[6][1] Diez, the Lexicon de la Buda and Pascu also start from the Latin verb, and the REW lists the Romanian word under it.^[3][7]

Candrea and Densusianu put it down to the influence of iungō (“to join”) in Vulgar Latin already, pointing to a glossary form iungla for iugula.^[8] Ciorănescu finds this crossing less likely and treats the /n/ as a nasal infix;^[3] Lambrior started from Vulgar Latin *junglō.^[3] Wiktionary gives a syncopated *juglō, with the nasal added later, or Lambrior's form, from an earlier *jungulō.^[1]

South of the Danube, Megleno-Romanian has the verb jungl'u, and Aromanian the noun giunglju (“sudden stabbing pain”), which matches junghi.^[3][8][9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to the 16th century, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[2] The past form junghiară “they slaughtered” stands in Coresi's psalter of 1570 at Psalm 105:35 and in the later psalters at the same verse.^[10] The old texts use the verb for slaughtering men and beasts, often as a sacrifice.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

From killing by the throat the verb came to mean stabbing with any blade and slaughtering an animal, and in the church texts sacrificing: Tiktin quotes Abraham, who wanted to slaughter his son as an offering to God.^[2][3] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 uses it often for sacrificial victims.^[11] A figurative use, “to be goaded” by passion, appears in the Mărgăritare.^[2]

Used of the body, the verb names a sharp stitch: mă junghie “I have a stitch in my side”.^[2][3] The postverbal noun junghi “stitch; dagger” and the dagger name jungher grew out of these senses.^[3] Today the prefixed înjunghia is the usual verb, and the simple one is popular or dated.^[3][4]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – the first record, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[2]
• 1570 – junghiară “they slaughtered” in Coresi's psalter.^[10]
• c. 1660–1670 – junghiat glosses the Slavonic participle in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[12]
• 1682–1686 – martyrs “slain with swords”, cu sabiile giunghiați, in Dosoftei's lives of the saints.^[2]
• 1688 – the sacrificial sense throughout the Bucharest Bible.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (popular) To stab, înjunghia: to drive a knife into someone; to cut the throat of a person or animal.^[4][5][3]
2. (dated) To slaughter an animal as an offering; to sacrifice.^[3][2]
3. (impersonal) To feel a sharp stitch, a stabbing pain: mă junghie “I have a stitch”.^[2][3][13]

Word family

• junghi
• jungher
• junghietură

Related words

• înjunghia
• Latin iugulō

Usage notes

The first person singular present is junghii; the older junghiu is no longer accepted.^[3][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. junghiá
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. junghia
4. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 569
5. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1293
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4607
8. ^ a b Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. junghia
9. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 504
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 105:35
11. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Preoția 17:3
12. ^ 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. junghiat
13. ^ Constantinescu, Grigore; Constantinescu, Eugenia (2014), Glosar. Arealul etnocultural Argeș-Muscel, p. 60