străluci

Forms

străluci (third-person singular present strălucește, past participle strălucit), 4th conjugation^[1] The 16th-century Codicele Voronețean has the third person strălucé: „Deca strălucé soarele cu zădufu, seacă iarba” “when the sun shines with burning heat, the grass withers”.^[2][3] Old texts and regional speech also have the variants strelucí and stărlucí, and a present strălúce of the third conjugation occurs as late as Alecsandri.^[4][3]

Etymology

Most dictionaries take it as a Romanian formation, from Romanian stră- + luci, the view of Pușcariu.^{[5][6][4][2][3]} luci continues Latin lūceō (“to shine”).^[1][7]

Candrea and Densusianu proposed instead Vulgar Latin *tralūciō, from Latin trālūceō (“to shine through”), and Tiktin and Ciorănescu give both explanations.^[5][3] Wiktionary reconstructs *extrālūciō, and Șăineanu had already proposed this form.^[1][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), in the verse of the Epistle of James on the sun rising with burning heat and withering the grass.^[4][3][2] It meant “to shine brightly”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Besides the usual intransitive “to shine, sparkle”, the old language used it transitively, “to make shine”: a church text prays that the eternal light of the knowledge of God may shine in the hearts of the faithful, and a later text speaks of a prince's wish to make his sons shine in the world through learning.^[3] Pontbriant's dictionary of 1862 has the transferred sense “to be reflected”, as of glory on a family.^[9] The figurative sense “to stand out, excel” is given by Șăineanu and modern dictionaries.^[8][6]

Timeline

• c. 1563–1583 – strălucé in the Codicele Voronețean.^[4][2]
• 1649 – strălucesc in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[10]
• 1688 – frequent in the Bucharest Bible, as in străluciră (Psalm 76:17).^[11]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary glosses it with Latin “splendor, fulgor”.^[12]
• 1862 – Pontbriant has “to be reflected”.^[9]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To shine brightly; to give out or reflect a strong light.^[6][1]
2. (intransitive) To sparkle, to glitter.^[6][13]
3. (intransitive) To seem to give out light because of whiteness or cleanness: Bucătăria strălucea de curățenie.^[6][13]
4. (figurative, of people) To stand out, to excel through one's qualities.^[6][14]
5. (obsolete, transitive) To make shine.^[3]

Word family

• străluc
• strălucit
• strălucitor
• strălucire

Related words

• luci
• lucios
• Latin lūceō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. strălucí
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. strălucí
4. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1002
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. străluci
6. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1, 1057
7. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 57
8. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 619
9. ^ a b Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 704
10. ^ 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. strălucesc
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ps 76:17
12. ^ 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. 450
13. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. străluci
14. ^ Breban, Vasile (1980), Dicționar al limbii române contemporane de uz curent, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 578