locui

Forms

locui (third-person singular present locuiește, past participle locuit) 4th conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Hungarian lakik (“to dwell, to inhabit”), a Hungarian loan.^{[2][3][4][5][6][1]} The regular Romanian form was lăcui, now obsolete; it was later drawn towards loc “place”, which gave the present form.^[3][6][1] The origin of the Hungarian verb is uncertain.^[2]

Ciorănescu compares a Slavonic verb that occurs only in documents written in the Romanian lands, and a form of the Bulgarians of Transylvania.^[3] Hasdeu and Șăineanu rejected the old link with Latin locus, and Alexics refuted the Latinist etymologies, as Tamás reports.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is recorded in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, of the early 16th century, as lăcui “to dwell”, for instance in Psalm 5:5.^[7][5] Tiktin cites it from the Codicele Voronețean.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Lăcui was the form of the old texts, as in the Bucharest Bible of 1688: „Hananenii atuncea lăcuia pământul” “the Canaanites then dwelt in the land” (Genesis 12:6).^[8][6] The old language also used it transitively, “to settle someone, to colonise”: Joseph settled his father and his brothers in Egypt, „și lăcui Iosif pre tată-său” (Genesis 47:11).^[8][4] The modern form locui gives both the intransitive “to live somewhere” and the transitive “to inhabit”, as in Alecsandri's „El locuiește un măreț palat de vară” “he lives in a grand summer palace”.^[8]

It is said of animals too, of a bird's nest or a beast's den.^[5] Tamás notes that a homonymous Hungarian verb meaning “to eat” was borrowed as well in some places.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – lăcui in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[7][5]
• c. 1563-1583 – in the Codicele Voronețean.^[8]
• 1688 – lăcuia in the Bucharest Bible.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To live, to reside somewhere; to have one's home in a place: Locuiesc la Cluj de zece ani.^[4][1]
2. (transitive) To inhabit a house or a place.^[8][5]
3. (intransitive) Of birds and animals: to have one's nest or den somewhere.^[5]
4. (obsolete, transitive) To settle someone in a place, to colonize.^[4]

Word family

• conlocui
• locuință
• locuitor

Related words

• loc
• înlocui

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Tamás, Lajos (1966), Etymologisch-historisches Wörterbuch der ungarischen Elemente im Rumänischen, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 505
3. ^ a b c 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. locui
4. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 598
5. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1386
6. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. locui
7. ^ 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 5:5
8. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. locui