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milă

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Etymology and origin of the Romanian word milă

milă1 pity, compassion

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
c. 1500–1520 Psaltirea Hurmuzaki
Borrowed from
Old Church Slavonic милъ
Ultimate origin
Proto-Slavic *milъ

Pronunciation

Forms

milă f (plural mile)[1]

Etymology

The word for pity is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic милъ (milŭ), feminine мила (mila), “worthy of pity”.[2][3][4][5][6][7] Ciorănescu cites Miklosich, Cihac, Berneker and Tiktin for it.[2] The Slavonic adjective continues Proto-Slavic *milъ (“sweet, dear”), which goes back to Proto-Indo-European *meyh₁- (“mild, soft”).[8][1] South of the Danube it is Aromanian nilă.[2][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest records are in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, at Psalms 24:11 and 29:15 among other verses.[10][5] Where the Hurmuzaki psalter has milă, the Coresi psalters have miloste.[3] Coresi's Evanghelie has „și-i fu milă d-însul” “and he had pity on him”.[3]

Semantic evolution

The sense “mercy, compassion” stands beside “help, charity, alms”, as in a cere milă “to beg”, and in religious language God's grace: old documents open with cu mila lui Dumnezeu “by the grace of God”.[4][2][11] A further sense is a pitiful state, and sadness.[4] Many phrases are built on it: de silă, de milă “willy-nilly”, fără milă “pitiless”.[4][5]

Romanian borrowed a whole family of Slavonic words of the same root: milostiv, milostenie, milosârdie, and formed others from milă: milos, milog, milui.[2]

Timeline

  • c. 1500–1520 – milă in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.[10][5]
  • 1570 – in Coresi's psalter.[12]
  • 16th century – in the Psaltirea Scheiană.[6]
  • c. 1618 – „mie mi-i milă de voi” “I have pity on you” in a text in Gaster's chrestomathy.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. pity, compassion: sympathy with someone's suffering or misfortune;[4][5] fără milă “pitiless”.[4][5]
  2. Help, a good deed; alms, charity;[4] a cere milă “to beg”.[4]
  3. A pitiful state; sadness.[4]
  4. Goodwill, kindness;[4][2] (religion) divine grace.[4][2]

Word family

  • milos
  • nemilos
  • milog
  • milogi
  • milogeală
  • milui
  • nemiluit

milă2 mile

Confidence
Disputed
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1561 Coresi's Tetraevanghel
Borrowed from
Polish mila
Ultimate origin
Latin mīlle

Pronunciation

Forms

milă f (plural mile)[1] An old neuter mil, plural miluri, was common in the 18th and 19th centuries: Șincai writes „Nemții numai puține miluri sânt departe” “the Germans are only a few miles away”.[3][6]

Etymology

The word for the mile is borrowed from Polish mila according to DEX and the DLR, and Scriban takes the Polish word from Italian miglia.[4][3][11] Ciorănescu instead takes it as borrowed from Modern Greek μίλι (míli), itself from Latin mīlia, and compares Albanian mil and Turkish mil.[2] Wiktionary gives both the Polish and the Greek source.[1] Tiktin calls it an indirect descendant of the Latin word and compares the form with the Polish one and with Middle High German mîle.[6] The Latin word, the plural of mīlle (“thousand”), is the source of the inherited mie “thousand”; the Greek word comes from the Latin phrase mīlia passuum (“a thousand paces”).[1][13] The old neuter ⟨mil⟩ follows the Greek.[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to Coresi's Tetraevanghel of 1561, at Matthew 5:41: „să te neștine luare cu sila o milă, pasă cu nusul doao” “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two”.[6] MDA2 and the DLR cite the same verse from the 1574 edition.[5][3]

Semantic evolution

The mile was a unit of length that varied from 1,500 to over 7,500 metres according to the country; old texts measure distances in mile de loc “miles of ground”, as in Ureche and Varlaam.[3][5] Set phrases named the Roman, Italian, German and French miles, and the Austrian mile was used in Transylvania.[5][14] Today it is the English mile of 1,609.3 metres and the nautical mile of 1,852 metres.[4]

Timeline

  • 1561 – o milă in Coresi's Tetraevanghel.[6]
  • 1581 – „doao mile și jumătate” “two and a half miles” in Coresi's Evanghelie.[3]
  • 1645 – in the Romanian translation of Herodotus.[3]
  • 1703 – the neuter plural miluri.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A mile: a unit of distance on land, which varied in the past from country to country; today the unit of 1,609.3 metres used in Britain and the United States.[4][5]
  2. milă marină: a nautical mile, 1,852 metres.[4]
  • milostiv
  • milostenie
  • milosârdie
  • umili
  • mie

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. milă
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. milă
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 654
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 12
  6. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. milă
  7. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
  8. ^ Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 797
  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 24:11
  11. ^ a b c Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 807
  12. ^ 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 17:54
  13. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας, p. 920
  14. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 78

Related etymologies

  • armată · also from Polish
  • ofițer · also from Polish
  • armătură · also from Polish
  • prea · also from Old Church Slavonic
  • înșela · also from Old Church Slavonic
  • pară · also from Old Church Slavonic
  • somn · also from Old Church Slavonic
  • veste · also from Old Church Slavonic
Cite this entry

“Milă.” Etymologically, 11 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/ro/mil%C4%83. Accessed 12 Nov. 2026.

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