lăuda

Forms

lăuda (third-person singular present laudă, past participle lăudat, third-person subjunctive laude) 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin laudō (“to praise”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The Latin verb is formed on laus (“praise”).^[6][1] Pușcariu, Candrea and Densusianu, and the REW give the same source.^[2][7][8]

The verb survives south of the Danube: Aromanian alavdu.^[2][9][10] Its Romance cognates include Italian lodare, Occitan lauzar, French louer, Catalan lloar, Spanish loar and Portuguese louvar.^[2][8] Ciorănescu also compares Albanian lëvdoj, which Wiktionary takes from the same Latin verb.^[2][1]

The noun laudă “praise” is either a back-formation from the verb or continues the Latin noun directly.^[2] Ciorănescu traces lăudător to laudātōrius and the old lăudăciune to laudātiōnem.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, where laud “I praise” stands in Psalm 55:4.^[11][3] The sense there is the religious one, praise of God, which runs through all the 16th-century psalters: lăudați “praise ye” occurs over twenty times in the Psaltirea Voronețeană alone.^[12]

Semantic evolution

From the start the verb meant both praising a person or a deed and glorifying God.^[3][5] The 1688 Bible has the plain sense: „și o lăudară pre ea cătră faraon” “and they praised her to Pharaoh”.^[4] The reflexive a se lăuda “to praise oneself” gave the sense “to boast, to brag”.^[4][5]

Two old senses have died out: “to denounce, to inform on someone” and, in the reflexive, “to threaten”.^[3][1] In familiar speech Cum te mai lauzi?, literally “how are you boasting now?”, is a greeting meaning “how are you?”.^[4][13]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – laud “I praise” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[11][3]
• 1551-1558 – lăudați “praise ye” in the Psaltirea Voronețeană.^[12]
• 1570 – laud and lăudați in Coresi's psalter.^[11]
• 1649 – the Slavonic–Romanian lexicon of Mardarie glosses Slavonic “praise” verbs with laud.^[14]
• 1688 – lăudară “they praised” in the Bucharest Bible.^[4][15]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To praise: to express esteem or admiration for someone or something.^[13][3]
2. (transitive, religion) To glorify God.^[3][1]
3. (reflexive) To boast of oneself: Se laudă mereu cu mașina cea nouă. “He is always boasting about his new car.”^[13][1]
4. (reflexive) To act tough, to make a show of one's daring.^[13][16]
5. (obsolete) To denounce someone.^[3][1]

Word family

• laudă
• lăudărie
• lăudăciune
• lăudăros
• lăudabil
• lăudăcios
• lăudător
• prealăuda

Related words

• laudativ
• Aromanian alavdu
• Latin laudō

Usage notes

The saying Laudă-mă gură, că ți-oi da o bucătură “praise me, mouth, and I'll give you a bite” mocks a braggart.^[3][17] The infinitive is pronounced in three syllables, lă-u-da.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. lăuda
3. ^ 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, 1329
4. ^ 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. lăudá
5. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. lăuda
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 953
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4938
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
10. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 41
11. ^ a b c 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 55:4
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 112:1
13. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 581
14. ^ 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. laud
15. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gen 12:15
16. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 735
17. ^ 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. lăuda