omorî

Forms

omorî (third-person singular present omoară, past participle omorât, third-person subjunctive omoare), 4th conjugation^[1] Tiktin notes forms with um- in the old texts of the 16th and 17th centuries.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic оуморити (umoriti, “to kill”), a word of the Old Church Slavonic of the church books.^{[3][4][2][1][5]} Wiktionary takes the Romanian form from the variant оморити (omoriti).^[1] The Slavonic verb, “to slay, to kill”, is from Proto-Slavic *umoriti.^[1][6][7] Ciorănescu compares Serbo-Croatian umoriti and a Bulgarian verb of the same family.^[3]

Old texts also have a variant in ⟨u-⟩, closer to the Slavonic.^[3][4][2] Ciorănescu lists Aromanian omurescu beside forms of mor “to die; to kill”, the Latin verb's descendant.^[3][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), at 1 Peter 3:18.^[4][2] The meaning there is already “to put to death, to kill”.^[2] Coresi's psalter of 1570 has the infinitive omorî and the past tense omorîră “they killed”.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

The core meaning has stayed “to cause the death of, to kill”, deliberately or not.^[4][11] In the church language it also meant “to mortify”: Varlaam's Cazania (1643) speaks of mortifying the body with fasting, „omorându-ne ... trupurile cu postul”.^[2] In the 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons the verb glosses Slavonic forms meaning “to put to death”.^[12]

Figurative and hyperbolic uses grew from the core sense: a omorî pe cineva cu zile “to cause someone's early death”, then “to make someone's life a misery”, a omorî în bătaie “to beat soundly”, and the exclamation of surprise nu mă omorî! “you don't say!”.^[4][11] The reflexive, mostly in the negative, means colloquially “to wear oneself out over something”.^[1] Ciorănescu notes that the word is in general use across the country.^[3] The derivatives include omor “killing, murder” and omorâtor “killer; deadly”.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1563–1583 – first recorded in the Codicele Voronețean.^[4][2]
• 1570 – omorî and omorîră “they killed” in Coresi's psalter.^[9][10]
• 1643 – “to mortify” the body with fasting, in Varlaam's Cazania.^[2]
• c. 1660 – the earliest of the Slavonic–Romanian lexicons glosses Slavonic “to put to death” with it.^[12]
• 1688 – frequent in the Bucharest Bible, as in Exodus 21:12 on a blow that kills.^[13][2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To kill, to cause the death of a person or animal, with or without intent.^[4][11][1]
2. (figurative, hyperbolic) To torment, to cause someone great distress: Mă omori cu întrebările tale!^[11][1]
3. (figurative) To get rid of, to make disappear: a-și omorî foamea “to stave off hunger”, a omorî timpul “to kill time”.^[14][11]
4. (reflexive, colloquial, mostly negative) To exert oneself greatly: Nu se omoară cu munca.^[1]
5. (obsolete, religion) To mortify the body by fasting and discipline.^[2][1]

Word family

• omor
• omorâciune
• omorâtor

Related words

• ucide
• moarte

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. omorî
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. omorî
4. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 211
5. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 444
6. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
7. ^ Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
9. ^ 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 104:28
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 93:6
11. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 742
12. ^ a b 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. omorî
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Exodus 21:12
14. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. omorî