muta

Forms

muta (third-person singular present mută, past participle mutat) first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mūtō (“to change, to move”), continued across the Romance languages.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian mut and Megleno-Romanian mut.^[2][6][7] The Romance cognates include Italian mutare, French muer, Occitan mudar, Catalan mudar, Spanish mudar and Portuguese mudar; in Italian and French the descendants of cambiō took over the sense “to change”.^[2][5]

Lewis and Short take the Latin verb as a frequentative related to moveō (“to move”), while the OLD connects it with words for exchange such as Ancient Greek μοῖτος (moîtos, “reward”), recorded in Sicily.^[8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Hurmuzaki psalter, of the early 16th century, where the verb means “to move, to come near”: „Nu se va muta cătră tinre hicleanulu” “the wicked shall not come near you”.^[3][4][10] Tiktin cites the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Latin already used the verb for movement as well as change: Plautus says that the moon does not move, neque se luna quoquam mutat.^[8] Old and popular Romanian kept “to move, to budge, to shake”: the 1688 Bible speaks of a rustling leaf, glas de frunză mutându-se.^[4][3] “To change” survives in old and popular speech, as in a-și muta gândul “to change one's mind”.^[12][11]

The main modern senses are “to put somewhere else” and, reflexively, “to move house”; officials are moved to another post, and chess players move their pieces.^[12][11] The old legal language used the verb for transferring a right to another person.^[11][3] In Transylvania the reflexive is said of a dislocated limb, and of a disease that spreads by contagion.^[3][4] In thieves' slang muta means “to kill”.^[13]

Timeline

• early 16th century – muta “to move, come near” in the Hurmuzaki psalter.^[3][4][10]
• 16th century – the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[11]
• 1688 – mutându-se “stirring”, of a leaf, in the Bucharest Bible.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To move, to shift something or oneself to another place; to transfer someone to another post.^[12][1]
2. (reflexive) To move house, to relocate: Ne-am mutat la Cluj anul trecut. “We moved to Cluj last year.”^[12][1]
3. (dated, popular) To change, replace, alter;^[13] a-și muta gândul “to change one's mind”.^[12]
4. (chess) To make a move.^[12]
5. (slang) To kill.^[13]

Word family

• mutăcios
• mutat
• mutătoare
• mutător
• strămuta
• nestrămutat
• mutare

Usage notes

A-i muta cuiva fălcile “to move someone's jaws” means to slap someone hard across the face.^[12]

References

1. ^ a b c d 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. muta
3. ^ 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. 2, 87
4. ^ 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. muta
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5785
6. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 721
7. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 199
8. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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 5:5
11. ^ 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. muta
12. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 686
13. ^ a b c Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. muta