pacoste

Forms

pacoste f (plural pacoste)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic пакость (pakostĭ, “harm, damage, injustice”), a word of the Slavonic of the church and chancery.^{[2][3][4][5][1][6]} DER follows Miklosich and Cihac.^[2] The Slavonic noun is from Proto-Slavic *pakostь; in the Codex Suprasliensis it translates Greek “madness” and “tyranny”.^[1][7] Its cognates include Russian пакость (pakostʹ), Bulgarian пакост (pákost, “harm”) and Serbo-Croatian pȁkōst (“malice”).^[1][8] Wiktionary compares *opakъ;^[1][9] Scriban derived it from the Slavonic adverbs he writes ⟨paky⟩ “again” and ⟨opaky⟩ “back”, a view of his own.^[1][9]

The adjective pacostnic “harmful” is from the Slavonic adjective DER writes ⟨pakostiniku⟩.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Mihail Moxa's chronicle of 1620, „că-i păru că au scăpat de pacoste” “for it seemed to him that they had escaped misfortune”.^[4][3][10]

Semantic evolution

Old texts use it for harm and calamity: the Bible of 1688 has the servants of Pharaoh ask „Pănă cînd va fi noao această pacoste?” “how long shall this misfortune be upon us?”.^[4][10][11] The 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons use it to gloss Slavonic пакость.^[12] Old senses now lost include “false charge, calumny”, “danger” and, rarely, “quarrel” and “sin”;^[13] cu pacoste meant “unjustly”.^[13][3][14] Klein in 1801 renders it with Latin “calamity, danger”.^[15]

From the misfortune the word passed to the person who causes it, a nuisance or pest.^[10][5] Costinescu in 1870 also gives “a worthless little man, a clumsy child”.^[16]

Timeline

• 1620 – first record, in Moxa's chronicle.^[4][3][10]
• 1644 – in the Evanghelie învățătoare: „Nu faci pacoste numai ție unuia” “you do harm not only to yourself”.^[10]
• 1649 – Mardarie's lexicon glosses Slavonic пакост.^[12]
• 1688 – in the Bucharest Bible, Exodus 10:7.^[11][10]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary: “calamity, danger”.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A calamity, great trouble or misfortune; the plight of one struck by it; năpastă, belea.^[5][3]
2. (colloquial, derogatory) A person who causes one trouble; a nuisance, a pest.^[5][17]

Word family

• pacostnic

Usage notes

The plural is pacoste, rarely pacoști.^[3] A lăsa în pacoste means “to leave someone or something to their fate”.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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. pacoste
3. ^ 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, 244
4. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. pácoste
5. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 761
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. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 5, 15
9. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună
10. ^ 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. pácoste
11. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Exodus 10:7
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. pacoste
13. ^ a b 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. 476
14. ^ Gaster, M. (1891), Chrestomatie română: texte tipărite și manuscrise (sec. XVI–XIX), dialectale și populare, cu o introducere, gramatică și un glosar româno-francez, vol. II, Leipzig: Brockhaus / București: Socec, p. s.v. pacoste
15. ^ a b 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. 411
16. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 227
17. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. pacoste