plăcea

Forms

plăcea (present plac, third person place, past participle plăcut, subjunctive să placă), 2nd conjugation^[1][2] MDA2 records a variant infinitive place.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin placeō (“to be pleasing”).^[4][3][2][1] The Latin verb belongs with plācō (“to appease”), and de Vaan finds its only close relatives in Tocharian, in words for “to agree” and “permission”.^[5]

The verb survives in Aromanian plac, and it has cognates across the Romance languages: Dalmatian plakar, Italian piacere, Sardinian piàghere, French plaire, Catalan plaure, Spanish placer and Portuguese prazer.^[4][6][7] Albanian pëlqej is an early loan from the same Latin verb.^[1][8] Ciorănescu, after Candrea, takes the Serbo-Croatian plakijer from this verb.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is the Slavonic–Romanian Gospel book of 1551–1553 (Matthew 14:6), the passage in which Herodias's daughter danced and pleased Herod.^[9] Coresi's Carte de învățătură of 1581, MDA2's first record, has the same scene: „și juca, și plăcu lui Irod” “and she danced, and pleased Herod”.^[10][3]

Semantic evolution

From the first texts the verb takes the person who is pleased in the dative and the thing that pleases as the subject, as in Latin.^[10][11] The Palia of 1581 has „Plăcu de-a firea lu Faraon acest cuvânt” “this word pleased Pharaoh well”.^[10] Old texts used the subjunctive placă-ți as a polite request, “be pleased to”, and folk speech still says placă! “please, go ahead”.^[9] A transitive use, a plăcea pe cineva “to like someone”, also occurs: A plăcut-o și a cerut-o “he liked her and asked for her hand”.^[9][3]

A sense of fondness for a person of the other sex is listed separately in DEX and MDA2.^[2][3] The phrase știi că-mi placi? expresses surprise or disapproval, and îmi place să cred means “I hope”.^[2] The noun plăcere “pleasure” and the adjective plăcut “pleasant” were formed in Romanian;^[4] displăcea was made after Latin displiceō, and complăcea after French complaire.^[4]

Timeline

• 1551–1553 – in the Slavonic–Romanian Gospel book (Matthew 14:6).^[9]
• 1581 – „plăcu lui Irod” in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[10][3]
• 1581 – in the Palia: „Plăcu de-a firea lu Faraon acest cuvânt”.^[10]
• 1649 – the participle plăcut in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[12]
• 1688 – the Bucharest Bible has the verb in many forms, among them plăcu and plăcut.^[13]
• 1691 – „toate câte vor plăcea ochilor tăi” “all that will please your eyes”, in a text of 1691 printed in Gaster's chrestomathy.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To be liked, to make a good impression on someone (with the person in the dative): Mi-a plăcut filmul.^[2][3]
2. To feel attraction or affection for a person, to be fond of: Îi place de colega lui.^[2][14]
3. To find enjoyable, to take pleasure in: Îmi place să citesc seara.^[2][14]
4. To suit; to want, to prefer.^[2][3]

Word family

• plăcere
• neplăcut
• neplăcere
• displăcea
• plăcut
• plac

Related words

• complăcea
• Latin placeō

Usage notes

The proverb Ce ție nu-ți place, altuia nu face “do not do to another what you do not like yourself” is old and widespread.^[9][15] The popular construction with de, îi place de cineva, marks a liking for a person.^[9][11]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 829
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 410
4. ^ a b c d e 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. plăcea
5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 833
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6557
8. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. plăcea
9. ^ 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. plăcea
10. ^ 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. plăcea
11. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 454
12. ^ 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. plăcut
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Facerea 3:6
14. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. plăcea
15. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 485