minți

Forms

a minți (third-person singular present minte, regionally mințește; past participle mințit; third-person subjunctive mintă); 4th conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mentior (“to lie”), in the active form *mentiō.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} DER and REW start from this active form, and the verb is shared with the Western Romance languages: Italian mentire, French mentir, Occitan mentir, Catalan mentir, Spanish mentir and Portuguese mentir.^[2][6] The Latin verb is formed on mēns (“mind”).^[7] Lewis and Short give “to invent” as its original meaning, from which “to lie” developed.^[7][8]

South of the Danube it survives as Megleno-Romanian mint and Istro-Romanian mintu.^[2] Capidan notes that the Megleno-Romanian verb is rare beside a more common form with a suffix.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is the Psaltirea Scheiană of the later 16th century, and Coresi's psalter has the third person plural mânt.^[3] MDA2 dates the word from Coresi's book of homilies of 1581: „Și să nu mințim înaintea lu Dumnezeu și oamenilor” “and let us not lie before God and men”.^[4][5] From the start it means to say what one knows is untrue.^[5]

Semantic evolution

Besides the plain sense of telling lies, the verb took a direct object, “to lie to, deceive someone”, and in particular “to be unfaithful to one's partner”.^[10][4][3] Wiktionary records an obsolete sense “to break (a promise, a principle)” construed with the dative.^[1] The subject can be one of the bodily senses: Eminescu's line “the ear lies to you and the eye deceives you” is Tiktin's example.^[3]

Hyperbolic phrases describe a great liar: minte de stinge or minte de stă soarele-n loc “he lies so that the sun stands still”.^[10][4] A-și minți foamea is to stave off hunger for a while with a little food.^[10]

Timeline

• 16th century – first recorded, in the Psaltirea Scheiană, and mânt in Coresi's psalter.^[3]
• 1581 – mințim “let us lie” in Coresi's book of homilies.^[4][5]
• 1645 – mințăsc in the Romanian Herodotus.^[5]
• 1688 – să nu mințiți “do not lie” in the Bucharest Bible.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To lie: to say things one knows are untrue.^[10][4][1]
2. (transitive) To deceive someone, to mislead.^[10][4]
3. (transitive) To be unfaithful to someone in love.^[10][4]

Word family

• mințit
• mințitor
• nemințit
• dezminți

Related words

• minciună
• minte

Usage notes

The present is mint, minți, minte.^[1] Tiktin records mințesc as the Moldavian present, and Wiktionary calls mințește regional and now mostly humorous.^[3][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. minți
3. ^ 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. minți
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 19
5. ^ 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. minți
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5510
7. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 190
10. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 657