scula

Forms

scula (first-person singular present scol, third-person singular present scoală, past participle sculat, third-person subjunctive scoale), 1st conjugation^[1] The old language also had the variant scola: „De va hi adurmit, iar să va scola” “if he has fallen asleep, he will get up again” (first half of the 17th century).^[2][3]

Etymology

Its origin is disputed.^[4][1] According to the DLR, MDA2 and DEX (the last with “probably”), it is inherited from Vulgar Latin *excubulāre, a hunting term for driving an animal out of its lair, built on cubō (“to lie down”).^{[3][2][5][6][1]} This is Pușcariu's etymology, followed by Philippide, Pascu and Rosetti.^[4] Ciorănescu calls the origin obscure and rejects it on both counts: the idea is “to raise”, not “to drive out”, and the Latin form could not have given ⟨scol⟩.^[4] He prefers to link the verb with Italian collare (“to haul up and down on a rope”) and Occitan colar (“to hoist the sails”), traced to a Latin *collāre, and probably to collum (“neck”) in the sense “height”, as in collis (“hill”).^[4][7] Older proposals, all rejected by him, start from *excollocō, *excollevō, extollō or Old Church Slavonic расколити (raskoliti), whence răscoli.^[4][1]

The verb survives in all four branches: Aromanian scol, Megleno-Romanian scol and Istro-Romanian scolu.^[4][8][9] Pascu explained the Aromanian verb from *excubilāre, built on cubīle (“lair”).^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, where the imperative scoală “arise” calls on God in the Psalms.^[2][11] The psalters also use it for rising up against someone, sculară “they rose up”.^[12] A 16th-century psalter has „Scolu-me de demăreața” “I rise early in the morning”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The core sense is a change of position from lying to upright.^[3] From it came “to wake up, to get out of bed”.^[3][2] From rising came “to get up after an illness, to recover” and, with din morți, “to rise from the dead”.^[2][5] Rising against someone gave “to rebel” and, transitively, “to raise (troops), to stir up”: Ghica wrote that Tudor began to raise the Pandurs.^[13][5] Old texts also use it for setting out on a journey.^[5][1] Ciorănescu lists sculătură “resurrection” as an old derivative.^[4]

Timeline

• early 16th century – scoală “arise” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[2][11]
• 1574 – „El se sculă” “he arose” in a Tetraevangelion.^[3]
• 1581 – Abraham “rose in the morning” in the Palia of Orăștie.^[3]
• 1649 – scol “I rise” in Mardarie's lexicon.^[14]
• 1688 – the verb is frequent in the Bucharest Bible: sculară “they rose up”.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. To wake up, to get out of bed; transitively, to wake someone.^[5]
2. To get up from one's sickbed, to recover;^[5] a se scula din morți “to rise from the dead”.^[5]
3. To stand up, to get up from the ground; transitively, to lift up.^[5]
4. (popular) To get up to leave; by extension, to set about doing something.^[5]
5. To rouse, to mobilize people for an action; to rise in revolt;^[5] (archaic) to go to war against someone.^[5]

Word family

• sculățel
• sculăreț
• sculătură

Related words

• Aromanian scol

Usage notes

A se scula cu noaptea-n cap means to get up before dawn, and a se scula cu fața la cearșaf or pe piciorul stâng to be in a bad mood.^[16][2] The noun sculă “tool”, whose articled form is also scula, is a different word.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 830
3. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. scula
4. ^ 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. scula
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 995
6. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2041
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 931
9. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 260
10. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 154
11. ^ 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 43:25
12. ^ 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 26:18
13. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. scula
14. ^ 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. scol
15. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Exodus 32:6
16. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 74
17. ^ Antonescu, G. M. (1875), Dictionariu romanu-francesu, Bucuresci: Typografia Curții (Lucrători Associați), p. 281