lăsa

Forms

lăsa (third-person singular present lasă, past participle lăsat, third-person subjunctive lase) 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin laxō (“to loosen, slacken”).^[2][3][1][4] The Latin verb, formed from laxus (“loose”), meant to widen and to slacken.^[5][1] In Vulgar Latin it replaced Classical relinquō (“to leave”).^[6]

The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian alas, Megleno-Romanian las and Istro-Romanian lǫsu.^[2][7][8] Its Romance cognates include Italian lasciare, Logudorese lassare, French laisser, Occitan laissar, Spanish dejar and Portuguese deixar.^[2][4][6] Ciorănescu adds Albanian lëshoj, after Philippide;^[2][1] Wiktionary takes the Albanian verb from Vulgar Latin *lassō, a byform of the Latin verb.^[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, of the early 16th century, already has lăsa and lăsară.^[9][10] MDA2 and Tiktin cite the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578): „Tatăl mieu și muma mea lăsară-mă, e Domnul priimi-mă” “my father and my mother left me, but the Lord took me in”.^[3][11][12]

Semantic evolution

The earliest senses are “to leave, abandon” and “to let go”.^[11][13] A text of 1561–1562 already uses the verb for a husband leaving his wife: „Preuteasa, de va curvi, popa să o lase” “if the priest's wife commits adultery, let the priest leave her”.^[11] Old texts also have “to forgive (sins)”, which Candrea and Densusianu trace from “to let” through “to omit” and “to remit”, as in Church Latin.^[6][14] Ciorănescu lists thirty senses, among them “to permit”, “to bequeath”, “to lower a price” and many reflexive ones: “to sag”, “to give up”, “to rely on”, and, of night or weather, “to set in”.^[2]

The past participle as a noun names the last day before a fast: lăsatul secului or lăsata secului, the eve of Lent.^[6] Lăsăciune meant “forgiveness” and “divorce”.^[2]

Timeline

• early 16th century – lăsa and lăsară in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[9][10]
• 1561–1562 – “to leave (one's wife)”.^[11]
• c. 1573–1578 – „lăsară-mă” in the Psaltirea Scheiană, MDA2's first record.^[3][11]
• 1649 – las in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[15]
• 1688 – lăsa and lăsat more than a hundred times each in the Bucharest Bible.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. To let go of something or someone held tight; to drop; to put down, leave somewhere.^[17][1]
2. To allow, let, not prevent; to leave someone or something in a given state: lasă-l să doarmă.^[17][1]
3. To put off, postpone.^[17]
4. To leave, go away from; to abandon, stop caring about; to omit, pass over.^[17][1]
5. Of strength, a faculty or a worn object: to fail, give out; of pain: to stop.^[17]
6. To leave behind, bequeath; to cause to remain; to give an order on leaving.^[17]
7. To lower the price, sell for less.^[17]
8. Reflexive: to give up a habit or a plan.^[17][1]
9. Reflexive: to sag, bend under a weight; to settle, lie down; of night, cold or weather, to set in.^[17][1]

Word family

• lăsare
• lăsat
• lăsător
• lăsătură
• lăsăciune
• delăsa

Related words

• Aromanian alas
• Latin laxō

Usage notes

Lasă! in the imperative means “never mind”, and las' că ... introduces a threat or a concession, “just wait, ...”.^[17][1] A lăsa în pace is “to leave alone”, and lasă-mă să te las describes a listless, careless person.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. lăsa
3. ^ 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, 1324
4. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4955
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 77
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 166
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 33:10
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 16:16
11. ^ 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. lăsa
12. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. lăsá
13. ^ 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 26:15
14. ^ Drăganu, Nicolae (1914), Două manuscripte vechi: Codicele Todorescu și Codicele Marțian, București: Socec (Academia Română, Studii și cercetări), p. 239
15. ^ 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. las
16. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Genesis 2:24
17. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 581