plată

Forms

plată f (plural plăți)^[1] An old plural plate occurs in texts of the 16th and 17th centuries: „n-au luat platele” “they have not received their wages”.^[2][3] Coresi's Gospel book has the dative platei in Luke 10:7.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic плата (plata, “payment”), from Proto-Slavic *plata, as DEX, Wiktionary and Tiktin give it;^[4][1][2][5] Tiktin and Scriban compare Bulgarian плата (plata), Serbo-Croatian plata and Russian плата (plata, “fee, pay”).^[4][1][2][5] Ciorănescu lists it among the derivatives of plăti “to pay” but takes the noun itself from the Slavic word.^[6] The DLR and MDA2 instead explain it as a postverbal noun of the verb, itself from Old Church Slavonic платити (platiti), and Șăineanu already called it abstracted from the verb.^[7][3][8][6]

The Bulgarian etymological dictionary records the borrowing of the Slavic noun into Romanian, with the senses “payment, wage, reward, retribution”.^[9] It derives the Proto-Slavic noun from the same base as *platъ (“piece of cloth”), since lengths of cloth once served as a means of payment, or else directly from the verb *platiti.^[9] The word is also Aromanian: Aromanian plată.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, at Psalm 54:21, where the word means “requital, payment”: „tinde mâna sa pre plată” “he stretches out his hand in requital”.^[7][2][3] The psalter has it five times.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The old texts already show both the material and the moral sense: wages for work („Cine va secera, plată va lua”, 1643) and the reward or punishment that deeds bring, as in the Gospel saying „plata voastră multă e la ceriure” “great is your reward in heaven”.^[7][2] Chroniclers such as Ureche and Neculce use it for pay, and Neculce for a well-deserved punishment: „și așa ș-au luat plata după fapta lui” “and so he got his due for his deed”.^[7][2] The 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons gloss Slavonic words for reward and recompense with it.^[11]

The phrase a lăsa pe cineva în plata lui Dumnezeu, literally “to leave someone to God's payment”, came to mean “to leave someone to their fate, to leave them alone”, and a se duce în plata Domnului “to go where one pleases”.^[2][4] In restaurants Plata! is the call for the bill.^[2][12] The modern language uses the word above all for the act of paying and the sum paid.^[4][3]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – plată “requital” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[3][7]
• 1589 – in the psalter printed in 1589.^[10]
• 16th–17th centuries – the old plural plate.^[2]
• 1643 – plată “wages” in the saying „Cine va secera, plată va lua” “whoever reaps will be paid”.^[7]
• 1649 – in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[11]
• 1688 – 25 times in the Bucharest Bible.^[13]
• 1801 – pláta in Klein's dictionary, glossed with Latin words for payment and wages.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of paying a sum owed; payment; also the way or system of paying.^[4][1]
2. A sum of money given for work done, for a thing bought or for the use of something: wages, price, fee.^[4][3][1]
3. A moral reward for good deeds, or a punishment for bad ones: și-a luat plata “he got what he deserved”.^[4][3]

Word family

• neplată

Related words

• plăti
• răsplată
• Aromanian plată

Usage notes

The phrases a lăsa (pe cineva) în plata Domnului “to leave someone alone” and a se duce în plata lui Dumnezeu “to go wherever one likes” are common.^[4] A separate regional plată “piece of bacon”, recorded around Săliște near Sibiu, is of unknown origin.^[7][3][15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. plată
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, 408
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 993
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. plată
8. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 486
9. ^ a b Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 5, 315
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 54:22
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. plată
12. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 452
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Facerea 30:18
14. ^ 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. 419
15. ^ Bulgăr, Gheorghe; Constantinescu-Dobridor, Gheorghe (2002), Dicționar de arhaisme și regionalisme, 2 vols., București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. plată