lipsi

Forms

lipsi (third-person singular present lipsește, past participle lipsit) 4th conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Modern Greek λείψω (leípso, “I shall be absent, lack”), the future of the verb meaning “to be absent, leave, lack”.^[1][2][3] Tiktin names the Byzantine Greek verb and its future as the source, and MDA2 the Modern Greek present tense of the same verb.^[4][5] Ciorănescu starts from the Greek aorist ἔλειψα (éleipsa), following Murnu, Meyer and Sandfeld, and allows that the verb may have come in part through a Slavonic verb recorded from the 14th century, as Miklosich and Berneker held.^[6] The Greek verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *leykʷ- (“to leave behind”), which also gave Latin linquō.^[1][7]

The verb survives south of the Danube as Aromanian lipsescu, also “to be needed, must”.^{[8][9][10][6]} Ciorănescu compares Albanian lipsem and a Bulgarian verb that Miklosich thought borrowed from Romanian, which he finds uncertain.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin and the DLR date the first record to 1481.^[4][3] In the psalters it appears in Coresi's of 1589, at Psalm 33:10, and the participle lipsit “lacking, deprived” at Psalm 20:2.^[11][12] Ureche's chronicle has it in the core sense “to be missing”: he notes that the stories and the course of the years are missing from the Polish chronicle, „lipsesc poveștile și cursul anilor”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Old Romanian used the verb both intransitively, “to be missing, lack”, and transitively, “to deprive someone of something” and “to remove someone from a place or an office”: Neculce and the Moldavian chroniclers write a lipsi din slujbă “to leave office” and să lipsească oastea “let the army withdraw”.^[4] The sense “to go away” lives on in the colloquial imperative lipsiți! “be off with you!”.^[4][2] The reflexive came to mean “to do without, give up”.^[4][2] In Banat and Transylvania the 17th–18th-century texts also use it for “must, be necessary”, the sense of the Aromanian verb.^[13][9]

Romanian formed the noun lipsă “lack, absence, need” from it;^[11][12] Roesler derived the noun from Greek λεῖψις (leîpsis), which did give the old lipsis of the 18th century, taken straight from Modern Greek.^[6] Other derivatives are lipsit, which also came to mean “simple-minded”, and nelipsit “ever-present”.^[6]

Timeline

• 1481 – the first record.^[4][3]
• 1589 – in Coresi's psalter, with the participle lipsit.^[11][12]
• c. 1642-1647 – lipsesc “are missing” in Ureche's chronicle.^[3]
• 1649 – lipsit glosses Slavonic words for “deprived, lacking” in Mardarie's lexicon.^[14]
• 1688 – frequent in the Bucharest Bible.^[15]
• 18th century – lipsis “lack”, borrowed from Modern Greek.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To be missing: not to be, not to be found where it should be; with the dative, not to have something: Ce-ți lipsește? “What do you lack?”.^[2][5]
2. Of people, to be absent, not to be present at a given moment.^[2][5]
3. (chiefly in the imperative) To get out of the way, go away.^[2][4]
4. To be needed or wanting, not to be enough: puțin a lipsit să… “it very nearly happened that…”;^[2] asta ne mai lipsea “that's all we needed”.^[2][4]
5. (mostly negative) To fail to do a duty, to hold back: nu voi lipsi “I shall not fail”.^[2][16]
6. (reflexive) To do without something, give it up;^[2][1] (transitive) to deprive someone of something they need.^[2][1]

Word family

• lipsă
• lipsit
• nelipsit

Related words

• Aromanian lipsescu
• Modern Greek λείπω (leípo)

Usage notes

A-i lipsi cuiva o doagă “to have a stave missing” means to be not quite right in the head.^[2][5] A separate noun lipsi, stressed on the first syllable, names a modern dance in 6/4 time that arose in Leipzig, and its tune; it comes from German Lipsi, after Lipsia, the Latin name of the city, and dictionaries record it from 1978.^[17][5][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 595
3. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. lipsi
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. lipsi
5. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1378
6. ^ a b c d e f 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. lipsi
7. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
9. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 632
10. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 591
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 33:10
12. ^ 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 20:2
13. ^ Costinescu, Mariana; Georgescu, Magdalena; Zgraon, Florentina (1987), Dicționarul limbii române literare vechi (1640–1780): termeni regionali, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 1, 170
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. lipsit
15. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gen 8:13
16. ^ Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. s.v. lipsi
17. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. lipsi