preot

Forms

preot m (plural preoți)^[1] Old texts write preut: „Frați! n-am știutu că preutu iaste” “brothers, I did not know that he was the priest” (Codicele Voronețean, Acts 23:5).^[2][3] MDA2 also records the regional variants priot and priut.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin prĕbĭter, a popular variant of presbyter (“priest”), which is from Ancient Greek πρεσβύτερος (presbúteros, “elder”).^[4][1][5][6] Candrea and Densusianu explain the variant as a folk-etymological remaking of the Greek word after praebeō (“to provide”); the DHLF speaks of the influence of praebitor (“purveyor”).^[7][8] In their view the word entered the language relatively late, after intervocalic /b/ had already disappeared from the older inherited words, so it developed in its own way.^[7] Tiktin traces the form through an intermediate stage with /u/ or /e/ after the /b/.^[9]

Aromanian has preftu and Istro-Romanian prewt.^[4][10] The word is shared with Albanian prift, Dalmatian prat, Italian prete, Occitan preire and Catalan prevere, which all go back to the same popular form.^[4][6] French prêtre continues instead the nominative of the classical form.^[7] Romanian later borrowed the learned doublet presbiter from Latin, with the variant presviter from Modern Greek.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the place name Preutești, in a document of 1502.^[9] As a common noun the word appears in the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), in Paul's words before the council: „Frați! n-am știutu că preutu iaste” “brothers, I did not know that he was the priest”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

From the first texts the word has named both the priests of the Old Testament and those of the Christian church;^[9] Tiktin quotes the Levitical priests of the 1688 Bible and the phrase preotul cel mare “the high priest”.^[9] The old texts usually have preut, which survives as a Moldavian variant.^[4][3] The form preot appears beside it in a psalter of 1573.^[11] The colloquial synonym is popă.^[12][3] A figurative sense is someone who serves an ideal, as in Eminescu's „preot deșteptării noastre” “priest of our awakening”.^[13][14]

Derivatives include preoteasă “priest's wife”, preoție “priesthood”, preoțesc “priestly” and preoțime “the clergy”, all also with the old stem preut-.^[4]

Timeline

• 1502 – the place name Preutești, the first record.^[9]
• c. 1563–1583 – preut “priest” in the Codicele Voronețean.^[3][2]
• 1570 – preut in Coresi's Psalter.^[11]
• 1573 – preot in the Ciobanu Psalter.^[11]
• 1649 – preut in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[15]
• 1688 – preot and its forms hundreds of times in the Bucharest Bible.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A priest: a person who performs the rites of a religion and mediates between people and the divine; in the Christian church, a member of the clergy who celebrates the services; colloquially popă.^[12][3]
2. (figurative) A person devoted to an ideal or a teaching; an apostle.^[12][13]

Word family

• preoteasă
• preoți
• preoție
• preoțesc
• preoțește
• preoțime

Related words

• presbiter
• Aromanian preftu
• Latin presbyter

Usage notes

Mare preot is the high priest of the ancient Hebrews or Egyptians.^[12] Preot de mir is a secular priest, not a monk.^[9]

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. preot
3. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 521
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. preot
5. ^ Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. s.v. preot
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6750
7. ^ a b c Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. prêtre
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. preot
10. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 876
11. ^ a b c 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 109:5
12. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 868
13. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 551
14. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 507
15. ^ 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. preut
16. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gen 14:18