strâmb

Forms

strâmb m or n (feminine singular strâmbă, masculine plural strâmbi, feminine/neuter plural strâmbe)^[1] Old texts also have strănb and strămb: „gura mare și strănbă” “a big, crooked mouth” (1779).^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *strambus (“crooked”), the popular form of Latin strabus (“squinting”).^[4][3][5][1] The Latin word was borrowed from Ancient Greek στραβός (strabós, “squinting”).^[1][6] Ciorănescu follows Cipariu, Diez, Tiktin, the REW and Pascu.^[4][7]

The word survives in Aromanian as strãmbu.^[4][8] Its Romance cognates include Italian strambo (“bow-legged; odd”) and Friulian stramp.^[4][9][1] Ciorănescu also compares Albanian stremp.^[4] Wiktionary gives shtrembër as a cognate too, but notes that some explain the Albanian word as native.^[1] The Buda lexicon of 1825 derived the Romanian word from στρεβλός (streblós, “twisted”), a view of its time.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the word to 1428, from a record it cites as BGL, long before the first Romanian texts.^[11] In Romanian writing it first appears in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century.^[3][12] From the start it meant both “crooked” and “false, unjust”: an early text speaks of mărturie strâmbă, “false witness”, in the commandment against it.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The physical sense “not straight, bent” and the moral sense “unjust, false” have run side by side since the oldest texts.^[11][2] The old laws and Bible translations speak of a judecată strâmbă “an unjust judgment”, a măsură strâmbă “a false measure” and a jura strâmb “to swear falsely”.^[11] Of people and their bodies it means bent, hunched or deformed.^[3][5]

Romanian formed the verb strâmba “to bend; to grimace”, recorded from about 1563, and the noun strâmbătate “injustice”, which Tiktin dates to 1480.^[13][14][4] The adverb gives several phrases: a râde strâmb “to laugh forcedly” and a se uita strâmb “to look askance”.^[5] Recent colloquial speech has a băga strâmbe “to make claims against someone or something”.^[15]

Timeline

• 1428 – Tiktin's first date for the word.^[11]
• 1480 – the noun strâmbătate “injustice”.^[14]
• c. 1500-1520 – strâmb in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[3]
• before 1550 – strâmbătate in a text printed in Gaster's chrestomathy.^[16]
• c. 1563 – the verb strâmba in Coresi's Apostol.^[13]
• 1688 – many forms in the Bucharest Bible, such as „cela ce mearge în căi strâmbe” “he that walks in crooked ways”.^[11]
• 1779 – the old form strănbă “crooked”.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. crooked, not straight: departing from the normal, straight shape; of a road, winding.^[5][3]
2. Leaning or fallen to one side; of people or parts of the body, bent, stooped or deformed.^[5][3]
3. (figurative) unjust, unfair or dishonest; made to deceive, as a măsură strâmbă “false measure”.^[5][11]

Adverb

1. With a bent back or with the body leaning to one side;^[5] a sta strâmb și a judeca drept “to sit crooked and judge straight”, to admit the truth.^[5]
2. askew, to one side; by extension, in disorder.^[5]
3. (figurative) falsely: a jura strâmb “to swear falsely”.^[5][11]

Word family

• strâmba
• strâmbătate
• strâmbătură

Related words

• Aromanian strãmbu
• Latin strabus

Usage notes

Phrases with the adverb: a râde strâmb “to laugh insincerely”, a se uita strâmb “to look with hostility” and a călca strâmb “to go astray, behave badly”.^[5] The adjective is also used as a noun: Tiktin quotes a saying in which strâmbii, the unjust, devour the country.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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. strîmb
3. ^ 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, 1006
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. strîmb
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. 1057
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8281
8. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net)
9. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
10. ^ 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. 679
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. strâmb
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 15:4
13. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. strâmbá
14. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. strâmbătáte
15. ^ Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. strâmb
16. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1007