ruga

Forms

ruga (first-person singular present rog, third-person singular present roagă, past participle rugat), 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rogō (“to ask”).^[2][3][1] Wiktionary traces the Latin verb to Proto-Indo-European *h₃roǵ-, an ablaut grade of *h₃reǵ- (“to stretch out”), with a shift from “stretch out (one's words)” to “ask”.^[1]

It survives in all four branches: Aromanian rog, Megleno-Romanian rog and Istro-Romanian rog.^[2][4][5] Its Romance cognates include Occitan rogar, Catalan rogar, Spanish rogar, Portuguese rogar and Old French rover.^[2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 and Tiktin date the verb from the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583).^[3][7] There Paul's advocate says „Rogu-te, se asculți tu noi” “I beg you to hear us” (Acts 24:4).^[8][7] Coresi's psalter of 1570 has the forms roagă and rugat.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th and 17th centuries the verb could mean “to pray” without the reflexive pronoun: Coresi's Gospel has „Rugați de ceia ce fac voao obidă” “pray for those who do you wrong” (Luke 6:28).^[7] The reflexive a se ruga “to pray” soon became the usual form.^[7]

The polite formulas te rog and vă rog “please” grew out of the sense “to ask”.^[11][1] Mă rog became a filler meaning roughly “well, you know”.^[7][11] Ciorănescu derives the nouns rugă “prayer, request” and rugăciune “prayer” from the verb, though for rugăciune he thinks a direct Latin source, Latin rogātiōnem, more likely.^[2] He takes rugăminte “request” as the plural of an older rugământ read as a feminine singular;^[2] Pușcariu derived it straight from Latin rogāmentum.^[2] Ciorănescu also says that the Transylvanian Saxon verb rugan was borrowed from Romanian.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1563–1583 – rogu-te “I beg you” in the Codicele Voronețean.^[3][7][8]
• 1570 – roagă and rugat in Coresi's psalter.^[9][10]
• 1688 – să mă rog “to pray” in the Bucharest Bible (Matthew 26).^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To ask someone earnestly for something, a favour or a service: te rog, vă rog “please”;^[11][1] a-și ruga moartea “to wish oneself dead”.^[11][1]
2. (transitive) To invite.^[11]
3. (reflexive) To pray, to address God.^[11][1]
4. (reflexive) To ask permission to do something;^[11] mă rog, a parenthetical “if you like, well”.^[11]
5. (reflexive, informal) To plead with someone insistently: s-a rugat de el o oră “she begged him for an hour”.^[1]

Word family

• rugă
• rugăciune
• rugător

Related words

• rugăminte
• Aromanian rog
• Latin rogō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. ruga
3. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 733
4. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 908
5. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 250
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7361
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. ruga
8. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. ruga
9. ^ 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 36:7
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 89:15
11. ^ 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. 966