pricepe

Forms

pricepe (third-person singular present pricepe, past participle priceput, third-person subjunctive priceapă), 3rd conjugation^[1] Old texts have precepe: „și oamenii nu precepu” “and people do not understand” (about 1550).^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin percipiō (“to take in, perceive, understand”).^{[4][2][5][1][6]} Candrea and Densusianu derive the old form precepe directly from the Latin verb, and the modern form from it by dissimilation of the first /e/.^[7] The verb is conjugated like începe.^[3]

Its Romance cognates include French percevoir, Occitan percebre, Catalan percebre and Portuguese perceber.^[4][6] The Latin verb is formed from per- (“through”) and capiō (“to take, seize”).^[8][1] Romanian later borrowed the same Latin verb as the neologism percepe.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2's first record is the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, written in the early 16th century.^[5] Tiktin's is the Codicele Voronețean (Acts 25:20).^[3] A homily of about 1550 has „oamenii nu precepu” “people do not understand”, and Coresi's Carte de învățătură says „precepu Domnul hitleniia legiuitoriului” “the Lord perceived the cunning of the lawyer”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In the old language the verb meant “to perceive, notice, find”: Nicolae Costin writes that a prince dismissed his hetman „că-l pricepuse foarte slab” “because he had found him very weak” in the office.^[3] The sense “to understand, grasp” grew out of this and is now the main one.^[3][9]

The reflexive first meant “to realize what is happening”: in Nicolae Costin a dignitary „s-au priceput mai curând și au fugit” “saw it sooner and fled”.^[3] With la or în it came to mean “to know about something, to be skilled at it”.^[3][9][5] Regional reflexive uses are a se pricepe de ziuă “to dawn” and, in Oltenia, “to recover”.^[5] The participle priceput became an adjective, “skilful, expert”, with nepriceput “clumsy”, and pricepere “understanding, skill” is the verbal noun.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – first record, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[5]
• c. 1550 – precepu “they understand” in a homily.^[2]
• 1581 – precepu “he perceived” in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[2]
• 1648 – pricepură “they understood” in the New Testament of 1648.^[2]
• 1649 – pricep in Mardarie's lexicon, glossing Slavonic “I know”.^[10]
• 1688 – priceput in the Bucharest Bible (Genesis 41:39).^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To understand, to grasp with the mind: N-am priceput ce vrea să spună. “I did not understand what he meant.”^[9][1][5]
2. (reflexive, regional) To become clear about something, to make sense of it.^[9][5]
3. (reflexive) To be good at something, to know a field well; to be skilful or competent: Se pricepe la mașini. “He knows about cars.”^[9][1][5]
4. (old) To perceive, to notice, to find out.^[3][5]

Word family

• pricepere
• priceput
• nepriceput
• precepătură

Related words

• percepe
• Latin percipiō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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. pricepe
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. pricepe
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. pricepe
5. ^ 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, 534
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6399
7. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. 1443
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 873
10. ^ 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. pricep
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gen 41:39