mită

Forms

mită f (plural mite)^[1] Beside the plural mite, old texts have mituri: a law code of 1780 rules that whoever is shown to take bribes, „luînd mituri”, shall be punished severely.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic мꙑто (myto, “reward, gift, bribe”).^[5][3][6][1] The DLR and DEX give the Slavonic form as мито (mito), and MDA2 as well.^[2][7][4] The Slavonic word continues Proto-Slavic *myto “toll, fee”, which is generally taken from Germanic: Old High German mūta (“toll”), whence German Maut, and Medieval Latin mūta.^[8][9] BER rejects a source in Gothic 𐌼𐍉𐍄𐌰 (mōta, “toll”), which would not explain the Slavic vowel.^[8]

The Slavic relatives include Bulgarian мито (mito, “customs duty; in western dialects also bribe”), Serbo-Croatian мито (mito, “bribe”) and Polish myto (“fee, duty”).^[8][1][9] BER also lists Albanian mitë (“gift; bribe”) among the borrowings of the Slavic word.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), in Acts 24:26: „Nădăiia-se că mită da-se-va lui de la Pavel” “he hoped that a bribe would be given him by Paul”.^[4][2][3] The word already meant a bribe there, a gift to win someone's favour.^[2] A psalter of 1589 uses it in Psalm 25:10, where the Slavonic text has the same word.^[10][11]

Semantic evolution

In the Slavonic sources the word meant a gift, a bribe, and also wages or gain.^[11] In Romanian the sense of a bribe was there from the first texts and has stayed the main one, usually with a da, a lua or a primi: a judge or an official who takes mită.^[2][7] Cantemir paired it with the Slavonic loan mâzdă in a proverb: „Mizda tot ochiul orbeaște și mita tot pierdutul nemereaște” “the bribe blinds every eye, and the bribe finds every lost thing”.^[2]

Old and rare senses: Klein's dictionary of 1801 and the Lexicon de la Buda of 1825 give “usury” beside “bribe” and “gift”, and MDA2 keeps “usury” as a rare sense.^[12][13][4] Scriban gives “customs duty” as the old sense, as in Bulgarian.^[14] Bolliac used it, now as a dated sense, of money paid to an exploiter: „Și-ncă-mi cer ciocoii mită”.^[15] Romanian built a family on it: the verb mitui “to bribe”, recorded from 1714, and mituială and mitărnicie.^[3][5]

Timeline

• c. 1563–1583 – mită “money given as a bribe” in the Codicele Voronețean, the first record.^[4][2]
• 1589 – in a psalter, Psalm 25:10.^[10]
• 1652 – a judge must be one who takes no bribes, „neluotoriu de mită”.^[2]
• 1688 – in the Bucharest Bible, 1 Samuel 12:3.^[16]
• 1714 – the verb mitui “to bribe”.^[3]
• 1780 – the plural mituri in a law code.^[2]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary glosses it as “usury” and “bribery”.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bribe: money or goods given, offered or promised to someone to make them break their duties, or carry them out more zealously, in the giver's favour.^[7][4][1]
2. The offence of giving or taking a bribe.^[4]
3. (obsolete, rare) usury.^[4][12]

Word family

• mitui
• mituială
• mitărnicie

Related words

• mâzdă
• Old Church Slavonic мꙑто (myto)

Usage notes

In old texts fără de mită meant “incorruptible”.^[4] Synonyms are șperț and șpagă.^[7]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. mită
3. ^ 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. mită
4. ^ 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. 2, 28
5. ^ a b 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. mită
6. ^ Cihac, A. de (1879), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane II: Éléments slaves, magyars, turcs, grecs-moderne et albanais, Frankfurt am Main, p. 198
7. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 661
8. ^ a b c d Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 4, 137
9. ^ a b Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill
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 25:10
11. ^ a b Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
12. ^ a b c Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 399
13. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 395
14. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 816
15. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 95
16. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. 1 Sam 12:3