poveste

Forms

poveste f (plural povești)^[1] The old texts write poveaste: „Ascultați poveastea sv[in]tei ev[an]gh[e]lii, cum spune de învierea lui” “listen to the story of the holy Gospel, how it tells of his resurrection” (first half of the 17th century).^[2] MDA2 also records the old variants povastă and poveastă, regional povestă and povestie, and old or regional plurals poveste, povesti and povesturi.^[3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic повѣсть (pověstĭ, “story, account”), from the Church Slavonic of the church and chancery.^{[4][5][3][2][1]} In Old Church Slavonic the noun renders Ancient Greek διήγησις (diḗgēsis) “narrative” in Luke 1:1.^[6] It continues Proto-Slavic *pověstь, made from *po- and *věstь (“news, message”).^[1] BER instead derives it from the stem of the verb *pověděti (“to tell”) with a noun suffix.^[7] Slavic cognates include Serbo-Croatian povest and Russian повесть (povestʹ).^[1] The Romanian noun goes with veste “news”, from the same Slavonic family.^[4][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to Coresi's Tetraevanghel of 1561, at Luke 1:1, the evangelist's “narrative”.^[9] MDA2 cites Coresi's Evanghelie cu învățătură of 1581.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In the 17th-century chroniclers the word means “account, history”: Ureche speaks of writers who set down rândul și povestea țărilor “the order and history of the countries”, and Miron Costin of a death known din om în om “as the tale goes”.^[9] The phrase de poveste “to tell the tale” describes the few who survived a battle, and then means “not a single one”.^[9][3] It could also mean “matter, affair”: Neculce writes of the emperor learning povestea aceasta “this business”.^[9]

The sense “folk tale, fairy tale”, close to basm, and the sense “made-up story, lie” (a spune povești “to tell lies”) are the main ones today.^[5][10] Popular speech also uses it for a proverb or saying, as in povestea vorbei “as the saying goes”.^[5][11] From Romanian, Transylvanian Saxon took poweste “story” and powestin “to tell”.^[4]

Timeline

• 1561 – in Coresi's Tetraevanghel (Luke 1:1), the first record.^[9]
• 1581 – in Coresi's Evanghelie cu învățătură.^[3]
• 1649 – poveaste in Mardarie's lexicon, glossing Slavonic повѣсть.^[12]
• 1688 – poveaste in the Bucharest Bible.^[13]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary glosses it with Latin narratio and fabula.^[14]
• 1862 – Pontbriant: “tale, narration, little story”.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fairy tale or folk tale: a prose story of fantastic events in which good wins over evil; basm; by extension any narrative of real or possible events.^[5][3] Ca în poveste “wonderful, as in a fairy tale”.^[5][3]
2. A made-up story, a lie: a spune povești “to tell lies”.^[5]
3. The story of someone's life or adventures; an account of what happened.^[5][3]
4. An incident or matter that draws attention.^[5] Ce mai veste-poveste? “what's new?”.^[5]
5. (popular) A proverb, a saying: povestea vorbei “as the saying goes”.^[5]

Word family

• povesti
• povestaș
• povestitor

Related words

• veste
• Old Church Slavonic повѣсть (pověstĭ)

Usage notes

A sta de povești means “to chat at length”, and a ajunge de poveste “to become a byword, to become notorious”.^[5][3] Nici poveste means “out of the question”.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. poveste
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 494
4. ^ 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. poveste
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 858
6. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
7. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 5, 404
8. ^ Cihac, A. de (1879), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane II: Éléments slaves, magyars, turcs, grecs-moderne et albanais, Frankfurt am Main, p. 453
9. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. poveste
10. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1028
11. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 502
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. poveaste
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Deut 28:37
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. 423
15. ^ Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 570