serba

Forms

serba (first-person singular present serbez, third-person singular present serbează, past participle serbat) 1st conjugation^[1][2] The old form is sărba: the Palia de la Orăștie (1581) gives the third commandment as „sărbează dumeneca” “keep Sunday holy”.^[3][4] Regional variants are serva and sirva; an old sărbi is also recorded.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin servō (“to watch, keep, observe”), with the Latin sense “to observe” narrowed to keeping a holy day.^{[6][5][2][4][7][1]} Its Romance cognates are Italian serbare “to keep, store”, Sardinian servare “to keep an eye on”, and Occitan servar, Catalan servar and Old Spanish servar.^[6][7][8] Nocentini glosses the Romanian verb as “to observe the feasts”.^[9] There is also Aromanian sãrbedz, formed with the suffix -edz.^[1] The Latin verb may come from servus in an old sense “guardian”, and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to watch over, protect”).^[8][9][1]

The noun sărbătoare “holiday” belongs to the verb: Ciorănescu forms it from the participle ⟨serbat⟩ with the suffix -oare, while Pascu and Densusianu reconstruct Vulgar Latin *servatoria; it has the forms Aromanian sărbătoare and Megleno-Romanian sîrbătoare.^[6][10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Scheiană, about 1573–1578, where sărbează-ți stands for the prăznui-vor “they will keep a feast” of another version (Psalm 75:11).^[5][4][3] A text of Coresi asks how Sunday should be kept: „În ce chip vom dară sărba dumineca?”^[4]

Semantic evolution

In the old texts the verb is religious: to keep a feast, to keep Sunday, to celebrate a saint; the 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons gloss it with Slavonic praznovati “to keep a feast”.^[3][12] Pontbriant also records “to rest from work” on a holiday.^[13] The old form sărba is now obsolete; by 1830 texts have serba, and the verb takes secular objects: a victory, a wedding, a name day.^[4][3][14] Poets used it figuratively, “to praise, sing”: Alecsandri's heart serbează bunurile vieții “celebrates the good things of life”.^[14][15]

Timeline

• c. 1573-1578 – sărbează-ți in the Psaltirea Scheiană (Psalm 75:11).^[5][3]
• 1581 – „sărbează dumeneca” in the Palia de la Orăștie.^[3]
• 1649 – serba for Slavonic praznovati in Mardarie's lexicon.^[12]
• 1688 – sărba in the Bucharest Bible (Zechariah 14:16).^[16]
• 1801 – serbez in Klein's dictionary, glossed with Latin.^[17]
• 1830 – a whole town au serbat an arrival and a name day, in a newspaper.^[3]
• 1862 – Pontbriant gives serba with Latin servare.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To celebrate an important event or a memorable day with a festive gathering.^[2][5][1]
2. (transitive) To keep a religious feast; to observe a holiday by not working.^[2][5][18]
3. (figurative) To honour, praise.^[2][5]
4. (obsolete) To officiate a service.^[5]

Word family

• serbare
• sărbătoare
• sărbători

Related words

• Aromanian sãrbedz
• Latin servō

Usage notes

The present takes -ez: serbez, serbează.^[2] Synonyms are sărbători and celebra.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1007
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. serba
4. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. serba
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 862
6. ^ 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. serba
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7872
8. ^ a b Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli, p. s.v. serbare
9. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. serbare
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, 151
11. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 922
12. ^ a b 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. serba
13. ^ a b Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 670
14. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 102
15. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 584
16. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Zaharia 14:16
17. ^ Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 441
18. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. serba