străbate

Forms

străbate (third-person singular present străbate, past participle străbătut, third-person subjunctive străbată) 3rd conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian stră- + bate (“to beat”).^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Pascu derived it straight from Vulgar Latin *extrabattere, which Ciorănescu finds improbable.^[2] Wiktionary calls it less likely.^[1] The verb has a counterpart in Aromanian strãbat.^[2][7][8] The simple verb continues Latin battuō (“to beat”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first recorded in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, with the sense “to pass through”: „Străbătum pren foc și apă” “we went through fire and water”.^[10][5][4] The same psalter has the participle străbătură.^[11]

Semantic evolution

DELR's senses run from “pass through, traverse, cross” and, in the old language, “take hold of” (of feelings), to the rare “succeed”.^[10] Old texts use it of going through a body or a crowd, as when Neculce writes that the Moldavians could not get through the bodies of the fallen, and of hot pitch soaking through to the flesh in Dosoftei.^[3][4] From “going through” came “travelling all over” a land, the transitive sense of crossing a distance, and the figurative “making one's way, finding acceptance”, as in Vlahuță.^[3][6] MDA2 adds the senses “to scrutinise” and, of rain, “to soak through”.^[5][3]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – the first record, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[10][5]
• c. 1650 – the derivative străbătătură.^[10]
• 1660 – in the Slavonic–Romanian lexicons.^[12]
• 1682–1686 – Dosoftei's Lives of the Saints uses it of hot pitch “soaking through”.^[3][4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To penetrate, to pass through a body; to break through.^[6][5]
2. (transitive) To traverse or roam a surface from end to end; to cross.^[6][3]
3. (intransitive) To get through somewhere with difficulty, overcoming obstacles; to reach, or (figurative) to succeed.^[6][10]
4. (of sounds) To carry through space and be heard.^[5]
5. (of rain) To soak someone through.^[5][3]

Word family

• străbatere
• străbătător
• străbătătură

Related words

• bate
• răzbate
• Aromanian strãbat

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. străbate
3. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. străbate
4. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. străbate
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, 1000
6. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1056
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
8. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net)
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2011–), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române (DELR), vol. I: A–B (2011), vol. II: C (2015–2018), București: Editura Academiei Române; continued online at delr.lingv.ro, p. s.v. bate
11. ^ 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 17:14
12. ^ 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. străbate