plăti

Forms

plăti (third-person singular present plătește, past participle plătit), fourth conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic платити (platiti, “to pay”), from Proto-Slavic *platiti.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} Ciorănescu glosses the Slavonic verb “to settle (a debt)” and compares Russian платить (platitʹ).^[5] The Slavic verb is usually connected with the word for a piece of cloth, because cloth served as a means of payment.^[6] Wiktionary explains it as a causative formed on *platъ (“fabric”).^[1]

The verb is shared south of the Danube: Aromanian plãtescu and Megleno-Romanian plătes, both from the same Slavonic source.^[7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century (Psalms 136 and 141).^[9] Tiktin's first record is the Psaltirea Scheiană, also of the 16th century.^[10] MDA2 starts with the New Testament of 1648, where the master „cheamă pe lucrători și le plătește lor plata” “calls the labourers and pays them their wages”.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

Besides “to pay”, the old language used the verb for “to repay, requite” and “to atone for”: Miron Costin writes that the world pays everyone's toil with death.^[10] It also meant “to be worth”: a text of 1642 speaks of wine that is worth fifteen galbeni, and a folk song of a gem worth the whole world.^[10] Seventeenth-century lexicons gloss it with Slavonic verbs for “to repay” and “to avenge”.^[11]

Ciorănescu adds the regional sense “to cost” in southern Transylvania and the reflexive “to be quits”.^[5] The figurative “to pay for, suffer the consequences of” gives the phrases a plăti cu capul “to pay with one's life” and a plăti cu dobândă “to pay back with interest”.^[4][3]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – first record, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[9]
• 16th century – in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[10]
• 1642 – “to be worth”.^[10]
• 1648 – “to pay wages” in the New Testament.^[3][2]
• 1660 – in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon, glossing “to repay”.^[11]
• 1688 – in the Bucharest Bible, of paying back stolen cattle.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To pay for goods, a service or a consumption, in money or in kind; to pay a tax or a debt; reflexive: to discharge an obligation.^[4]
2. To remunerate, pay for work done; intransitive: to reward someone for their deeds.^[4]
3. (popular, intransitive) To be worth;^[4] a nu plăti nici o ceapă degerată to be worth nothing at all.^[4]
4. To suffer the consequences of something, to atone for it.^[3][10]

Word family

• plătitor
• platnic
• neplatnic
• răsplăti
• neplătit

Related words

• Aromanian plãtescu

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. plăti
3. ^ 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, 412
4. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 830
5. ^ 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. plăti
6. ^ Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 863
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 225
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 136:11
10. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. plăti
11. ^ 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. plăti