pierde

Forms

pierde (third-person singular present pierde, past participle pierdut, third-person subjunctive piardă), 3rd conjugation^[1] Old texts write piarde, as in Coresi's Evanghelie: „Și-l va ucide acela pre el și-l va piarde” “and that one will kill him and destroy him”.^[2][3] MDA2 records an older first person pierz beside pierd and a regional participle piert.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin perdō (“to destroy, ruin; to lose”).^[3][4][2][1] It was formed from per- (“through, thoroughly”) and dō (“to give, put”).^[5]

The verb survives in all four branches: Aromanian cherdu, Megleno-Romanian perd and Istro-Romanian pierd.^[3][6][7] It has cognates across Romance: Dalmatian piardro, Italian perdere, French perdre, Catalan perdre, Spanish perder and Portuguese perder.^[3][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century.^[4] There the verb means “to destroy, kill”, a sense the DLR places first and labels popular, ecclesiastical and euphemistic.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

In the old texts the verb served as the causative of pieri “to perish”: “to bring to ruin, destroy”, as in the Psaltirea Scheiană Pierzi toți cei ce dodeiră sufletului mieu.^[9] The sense “to kill” runs from the psalters through Coresi, Varlaam, Miron Costin and the Bible of 1688 to Creangă.^[2] From it came the senses “to damn” in church language and, reflexively, “to die” and “to ruin oneself”.^[4]

The modern centre of the verb is “to lose”: to mislay a thing, to lose one's way, to be deprived of something or someone, to be defeated, and to waste time.^[10] Popular speech also uses it for a miscarriage, a pierde copilul.^[9][10] Derivatives include the noun pierzare “violent death” and the old răspierde “to destroy utterly”, of the 17th century.^[3]

Timeline

• early 16th century – piarde “to destroy” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[4][2]
• 1570 – pierzi “you destroy” in Coresi's psalter.^[11]
• 16th century – pierzi “you destroy” in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[9]
• 17th century – răspierde “to destroy utterly”.^[3]
• 1688 – pierdut and other forms throughout the Bucharest Bible.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To lose, mislay: not to know where a thing is;^[10][1] a-și pierde urma “to vanish without trace”.^[10][1]
2. (transitive) To lose one's way;^[10][1] (reflexive) to get lost, stray from one's group.^[10][1]
3. (reflexive, figurative) To be absorbed in something; to be overwhelmed by an emotion.^[10]
4. (transitive) To be deprived of, be left without; to lose a part of the body or a faculty: a-și pierde mințile “to go mad”.^[10]
5. (colloquial, of women) To miscarry.^[10]
6. (transitive) To lose a loved one through death or separation.^[10]
7. (ambitransitive) To be defeated, lose a war, contest or lawsuit.^[10][1]
8. (transitive) To miss, arrive too late for; to waste time.^[10][1]
9. (popular) To kill;^[10] (reflexive) to die; to ruin.^[10]
10. (old and popular) To destroy, wipe out peoples, countries or goods.^[10]
11. (reflexive) To pass out of sight, disappear; of sounds, to fade away.^[10]

Word family

• pierzare
• pierzanie
• pierzător
• pierde-vară
• pierdere

Related words

• pieri
• Aromanian cherdu
• Latin perdō

Usage notes

Set phrases include a-și pierde cumpătul “to lose one's temper”, a-și pierde cunoștința “to faint” and a pierde vremea “to waste time”; the compound pierde-vară is an idler.^[10][1]

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 Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. pierde
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. pierde
4. ^ 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, 375
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 598
7. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 219
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6403
9. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. pierde
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 816
11. ^ 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 5:6
12. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gen 35:4