scăpăta

Forms

scăpăta (third-person singular present scapătă, past participle scăpătat, third-person subjunctive scapete), 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *excapitō, a verb built on caput (“head; end”), as Ciorănescu, Tiktin, DEX, MDA2 and the DLR agree.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Wiktionary notes that the attested Late Latin verb meant “to behead”, so the Romance words must go back to an unrecorded sense such as “to reach the end” or “to decrease”.^[1] Ciorănescu derives the senses from “to reach something”, and compares Romanian căpăta.^[2]

The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian ascapit “to set (of the sun)” and Megleno-Romanian dăscapit, which Capidan derives from a Latin form with the prefix ⟨de-⟩.^[2][7][8] Ciorănescu compares Italian scapitare (“to suffer a loss”), Old French deschater and Occitan descaptar, the last two from *discapitō.^[2][3] DELI and Nocentini explain the Italian verb as an Italian formation on the Latin noun in the sense “capital”.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is the Romanian translation of the Teachings of Neagoe Basarab, which he dates 1654.^[3] There it means to stray or fall away: „Să nu se scapete de slava celor ce s-au încununat” “let him not fall away from the glory of those who were crowned”.^[11] MDA2 cites the same work, by its 1843 edition.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The new sense was to slip or fall by accident, as in the Mineiul of 1776, where someone is afraid of slipping into a chasm.^[6][5] The same text uses it for falling into sin.^[11] Of the sun, moon and stars it came to mean to go down, to set, the main popular sense today, and soare-scapătă names the west.^[4][12] From falling and declining came the sense of losing one's fortune, to become poor.^[4][5]

Romanian formed scăpătăciune “decay, poverty” and the noun scăpătat “sunset”, which has a match in Aromanian.^[2]

Timeline

• 1654 – the first record, in the Romanian translation of the Teachings of Neagoe Basarab.^[3]
• 1776 – “to slip, to fall” and “to sin” in the Mineiul.^[6][11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (popular) Of the sun, moon and stars, to go down towards the horizon, to set.^[4][12]
2. To slip down, fall, sink.^[4][5]
3. Of eyes or one's gaze, to slide off what one is looking at, from tiredness.^[4]
4. To become impoverished, to lose one's wealth.^[4][5]

Word family

• scăpătăciune
• scăpătat
• scăpătare

Related words

• căpăta

Usage notes

Soare-scapătă is a popular name for the place where the sun sets, the west.^[12] Beside the present scapătă there is a rare scăpătează.^[5][6]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. scăpăta
3. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. scăpăta
4. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 986
5. ^ 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, 795
6. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. scăpăta
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 105
9. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
10. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
11. ^ a b c Costinescu, Mariana; Georgescu, Magdalena; Zgraon, Florentina (1987), Dicționarul limbii române literare vechi (1640–1780): termeni regionali, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 1, 258
12. ^ a b c Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 42