porni

Forms

porni (third-person singular present pornește, past participle pornit) 4th conjugation^[1] A regional second-person form poarnă occurs beside pornești.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic поринѫти (porinǫti, “to push”), a word of Old Church Slavonic.^{[4][3][2][5][6]} Tiktin gives the source as probable.^[7] It goes back to Proto-Slavic *porinǫti.^[1] Ciorănescu explains the senses from the transitive “to urge on, to give free rein”, which led to “to set in motion”, and compares Serbo-Croatian prinuti (“to urge”).^[4] Miklosich already linked the Romanian verb with the Slavonic one.^[6]

Ciorănescu compares Megleno-Romanian părăiés (“to fly”);^[8] Capidan thought it might be one word with Aromanian apărnescu and the Daco-Romanian verb.^[4][8] Wiktionary compares purnescu, which Papahagi refers to the same headword.^[1][9] Diculescu's derivation from Ancient Greek ἀπόρνυμαι (apórnumai, “to set out”) seemed doubtful to Ciorănescu.^[4][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is the Codicele Voronețean (Acts 19:29), of the 16th century.^[7] In Coresi's homiliary of 1581 the herd of swine rushes from the shore into the sea: „se porni toată turma porcilor den țărmurile mării” “the whole herd of swine set off from the shores of the sea”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The intransitive and reflexive “to set off, to leave” was the main sense from the first texts, quoted from Coresi, Dosoftei and Budai-Deleanu.^[2][3] The transitive “to send off” and “to stir up, to anger” are quoted from the chroniclers and Antim: Neculce writes au pornit Vodă și pre doamna la Cetățuie “the prince also sent the princess off to Cetățuia”.^[7] The Bible of 1688 has să porni “set out” in Genesis 31:21.^[7] Of tears and blood it means “to start flowing”.^[2] With machines it came to mean “to start (up), to run”, and of actions “to begin”: a porni proces “to bring a lawsuit”.^[5][7] The 17th-century lexicons gloss pornit with Slavonic words for “impetuous, violent”, a sense of the participle that Ciorănescu also gives.^[11][4] Candrea traced two Ukrainian pastoral verbs to it, for grazing the flock at night and on fallow land.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1563-1583 – in the Codicele Voronețean (Acts 19:29).^[7]
• 1581 – se porni “set off” in Coresi's homiliary.^[3][2]
• 1649 – the participle pornit in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[12]
• 1688 – să porni “set out” in the Bucharest Bible (Genesis 31:21).^[7]
• 1801 – Klein glosses it with Latin moveo.^[13]
• 1857 – the derivative porneală in Polizu's dictionary.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To set off, leave, set out for somewhere;^[5][3] a porni cu stângul/dreptul “to start on the wrong/right foot”.^[5][3]
2. Of vehicles, machines or engines: to start, set in motion or start working; to switch on.^[5][1]
3. Of actions or natural forces: to begin, break out; to cause to begin: a porni un proces “to bring a lawsuit”.^[5]
4. To set about doing something, to begin;^[5] (popular) a porni grea “to become pregnant”.^[5]
5. To urge, prompt someone; to incite, stir up.^[5][4]

Word family

• pornire
• porneală
• pornit
• pornitură

Related words

• Aromanian purnescu

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. porni
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, 473
4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. porni
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 851
6. ^ a b Miklosich, Franz (1862–1865), Lexicon palaeoslovenico-graeco-latinum emendatum auctum, Vindobonae: Braumüller
7. ^ 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. porni
8. ^ a b Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 215
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 897
10. ^ Wikționar (Romanian Wiktionary), ro.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. porni
11. ^ 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. porni
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. pornit
13. ^ 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. 421