numai

Forms

numai is invariable; the popular form numa is common in speech and in writers who imitate it: „Moș Spânu-i mai mult mut; spune numa o vorbă, într-o zi” “old Spânu is mostly silent; he says just one word a day” (Sadoveanu).^[2][3] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 has numai 421 times and numa once.^[4] MDA2 also lists the regional forms numă and număi.^[5] In the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet it was written нумай.^[1]

Etymology

It is a compound from Romanian nu (“not”) + mai (“more”), literally “no more (than)”, which became one word.^[5][3][1] DEX and the DLR give a second possibility, that Romanian inherited the phrase already joined, as Latin nōn magis (“more”).^[3][2] Candrea and Densusianu, Cihac and Șăineanu derived it from the Latin phrase alone.^[6][7][8] Gabinschi lists both explanations.^[9]

The word survives south of the Danube as Aromanian numa “only”, which Pascu also takes from the Latin phrase.^[10] Other Romance languages made the same combination of “not” and “more”: Catalan només, the Latin American Spanish nomás and Venetian noma.^[1][6] Ungureanu adds parallels from the dialects of Trentino, Lombardy and the Ladin valleys, which he reads as evidence of a shared late spoken Latin.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, at Psalm 132:1.^[12] The Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583) has it in the Acts of the Apostles.^[5][13] Its sense from the start was restrictive, “only, no more than”: Coresi's Carte de învățătură of 1581 says „Trei ucenici numai luo Isus” “Jesus took only three disciples”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

From “only” the word developed a hyperbolic use, “nothing but, all”: Tiktin quotes a forest whose leaves were „numai diamanturi și pietre nestemate” “nothing but diamonds and precious stones”.^[13] With a negation it came to mean “anything but”: Fata numai frumoasă nu e “the girl is anything but pretty”.^[13] The old and popular language used numai ce and numai cât before a verb for a sudden event, “all of a sudden”.^[13][3]

As a conjunction it means “but, only”, and after a negative clause it once stood for ci “but rather”.^[3][1] The correlative nu numai…, ci și… “not only…, but also…” is old.^[13] In Banat and Transylvania numai follows an imperative to make the order sound easy or to wave away an objection, a use that Wiktionary takes as a semantic loan from Hungarian csak (“only”).^[1] Hungarian csak itself has had this encouraging sense since 1527.^[14]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – the first record, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (Psalm 132:1).^[12]
• c. 1563–1583 – in the Codicele Voronețean.^[5][13]
• 1581 – „Trei ucenici numai luo Isus” in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[2]
• 1649 – Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon uses it to gloss Slavonic words for “only”.^[15]
• 1688 – 421 instances in the Bucharest Bible, beside one numa.^[16]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary glosses numâï with Latin tantum and duntaxat.^[17]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda gives Hungarian tsak and German nur as its equivalents.^[18]

Meanings

Adverb

1. only, no more than; nobody or nothing else, at no other time or place, for no other reason: Am numai doi lei. The phrase numai să… or numai dacă… means “provided that”, and nu numai că… “besides the fact that”.^[3][5]
2. (often hyperbolic) Entirely, all over, nothing but: Era numai noroi pe drum.^[3][1]
3. On the point of, just about; precisely, just: numai bun “just right”.^[3][19]
4. (old and popular) Suddenly, unexpectedly; at once: numai ce + verb “all at once”.^[3]
5. (Banat, Transylvania, colloquial) After an imperative, to make the request sound simple: Intră numai!^[1]

Conjunction

1. but, however, yet; after a negative clause, but rather: numai că… “only that…”.^[3][20]

Word family

• numaidecât
• numaicât

Related words

• nu
• mai
• Aromanian numa

Usage notes

The phrase numai și numai stresses exclusiveness, “solely”.^[21] Numaidecât “at once” is written as one word.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. numai
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 724
4. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Matthew 12:4
5. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 174
6. ^ a b Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. 173
7. ^ Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 181
8. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 434
9. ^ Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 133
10. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 112
11. ^ Ungureanu, Dan (2024), Istoria limbii române, Chișinău: Cartier, p. 346
12. ^ 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 132:1
13. ^ 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. numai
14. ^ Benkő, Loránd (ed.) (1967–1976), A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára, 3 vols., Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 1, 468
15. ^ Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. numai
16. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Genesis 3:11
17. ^ 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. 407
18. ^ 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. 451
19. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 879
20. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. numai
21. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 184