salva

Forms

salva (third-person singular present salvează or (obsolete) salvă, past participle salvat) 1st conjugation^[1] The older present without -ez is in Heliade-Rădulescu: „Salvă-ți poporul, Doamne!” “Save your people, Lord!”^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin salvō (“to save”), with Italian salvare, the sources DEX, MDA2, the DLR and MDN name.^{[3][4][2][5][1]} DN gives the Latin verb and compares the Italian one, while Ciorănescu and Tiktin give the Latin verb alone, as a 19th-century loan.^[6][7][8]

The Latin verb is Late Latin, “to heal, keep”, and in the language of the Church “to save, redeem”; it was formed on salvus (“safe, unharmed”).^[9] Besides the Italian verb, it lives on in French sauver, Spanish salvar and Portuguese salvar.^[10][9] Graur puts it in one family with salut and salve.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Wiktionary dates the first record to about 1830.^[1] The DLR's first quotation, and MDA2's first record, is from Heliade-Rădulescu, a prayer asking God to save his people.^[2][4] Tiktin's earliest record is of 1848.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Negulici (1848) glosses the verb with the inherited mântui and scăpa, the words it came to replace in most uses.^[12] MDA2 records the special sense “to free from bondage” and the phrase a salva aparențele “to keep up appearances”;^[4][3] DEX adds a salva situația “to save the situation”.^[4][3] In computing it has meant saving a document to a disk or another medium since the early 2000s.^[13][1]

Ciorănescu derives salvator from Latin salvātor, salv-conduct from French sauf-conduit, and salvare “rescue; ambulance” from the verb.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 1830 – the first record.^[1]
• 1848 – in Negulici's dictionary, with both present forms salv and salvez.^[12]
• 1848 – Tiktin's earliest record.^[8]
• 2006 – “to save” a file in computing.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive and reflexive) To rescue someone, or to escape oneself, from danger or trouble: a salva situația “to save the situation”, a salva aparențele “to keep up appearances”.^[3][4][1]
2. (dated) To set free, liberate.^[4]
3. (computing) To save a file, copying it from working memory to a disk or other storage.^[13][1]

Word family

• salvator
• salvamar
• salvamont
• salvare

Usage notes

Negulici let the verb be conjugated either way, salv, salvi, salvă or salvez, salvezi, salvează; only the second survives.^[12][1] The noun salvă “salvo”, which Ciorănescu derives from French salve, is a separate word.^[7][14] The village name Salva in Năsăud, recorded as Zalva in 1440, has nothing to do with the verb.^[15][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. salva
3. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 973
4. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 752
5. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. salva
6. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. salva
7. ^ 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. salva
8. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. salva
9. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7557
11. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. no. 230
12. ^ a b c Negulici, I. D. (1848), Vocabular romînesc de toate vorbele streine întroduse pînă acum în limba romînească și de toate cuvintele ce s-ar mai putea introduce încă, București, p. s.v. salvare
13. ^ a b c Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. salvá
14. ^ Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich
15. ^ Suciu, Coriolan (1966–1968), Dicționar istoric al localităților din Transilvania, I–II, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România