slujbă

Forms

slujbă f (plural slujbe)^[1] Regional variants are sclujbă, stlujbă and zlujbă.^[2] In the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet the word was written службэ.^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic слоужьба (služĭba, “service, ministry”), a word of the Slavonic church and chancery.^[3][2][4][1] DER treats it with the verb sluji, from слоужити (služiti), and also takes the noun from the Slavonic one.^[5] Scriban compares the Bulgarian and Russian words of the same form.^[6] The Slavonic noun is from Proto-Slavic *služьba, formed from *sluga (“servant”) with the suffix *-ьba; compare Serbo-Croatian služba.^[1] Romanian also borrowed slugă “servant” from the same Slavic root.^[5]

The Old Church Slavonic noun meant “service, care, ministry” and rendered Ancient Greek διακονία (diakonía).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the form slujba in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, of the early 16th century, at Psalm 103:15, a verse repeated in the other 16th-century psalters.^[8][4] MDA2 cites the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583).^[2] Glossaries of old texts give it as “office, divine service, worship”, with slujba idolilor for idolatry and slujba pogrebaniei for the burial service.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The word carried both sides of its Slavonic model from the start: service done for someone, and the service of God.^[4][9] A manuscript of 1675 asks priests to hold a service in church every day, and one of 1691 speaks of those who gave themselves to the service of idols.^[4] Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon of 1649 uses slujbă for Slavonic литургиа “liturgy”.^[10] The Lexicon of Buda (1825) also records the old sense of labour owed to a lord, Latin angaria, German Frohndienst.^[11]

From “service” came “office, post”, and in the old administration a branch of the state revenue: slujba oieritului, the sheep tax, in a document of 1805.^[4][6] In modern Romanian the main sense is a paid job, and popularly also military service; the church sense lives on beside it.^[3] The dialect texts of Bessarabia record slujbă for military service.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – slujba in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, Psalm 103:15, the first record.^[8]
• c. 1563–1583 – in the Codicele Voronețean.^[2]
• 1649 – Mardarie's lexicon glosses Slavonic “liturgy” with slujbă.^[10]
• 1675 – a manuscript bids priests hold a service in church every day.^[4]
• 1688 – frequent in the Bucharest Bible, as slujbă and its inflected forms.^[12]
• 1805 – slujba oieritului, a branch of the princely revenue, in a document.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A job: paid work with set hours for an employer; a post, a position.^[3][1]
2. (popular) military service.^[3][2]
3. (rare) A mission or task;^[3] (dated) a favour done for someone.^[3]
4. A church service: the rites a priest performs for a feast or occasion.^[3][1]

Word family

• slujbaș
• slujbuliță
• slujbușoară

Related words

• sluji
• slugă

Usage notes

A fi în slujba cuiva means “to be at someone's service; to serve someone's interests or a cause”; the old a-i fi cuiva de slujbă means “to be of use to someone”.^[3][2] A proverb says Vine slujba, vine și mintea “with the office comes the sense”.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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, 913
3. ^ 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. 1027
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. slujbă
5. ^ a b 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. sluji
6. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1213
7. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
8. ^ 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 103:15
9. ^ a b Gaster, M. (1891), Chrestomatie română: texte tipărite și manuscrise (sec. XVI–XIX), dialectale și populare, cu o introducere, gramatică și un glosar româno-francez, vol. II, Leipzig: Brockhaus / București: Socec, p. s.v. slujbă
10. ^ 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. slujbă
11. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 649
12. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ex 12:16