sub

Forms

sub (+accusative)^[1] Old texts write supt or suptu: the Psaltirea Scheiană has „Și plecă ceriu și deștinse și întunerecu suptu picioarele lui” “he bowed the heavens and came down, and darkness was under his feet” (Psalm 17).^[2][3] MDA2 lists the variants subt, supt (old and popular), sup, suptu, sopt (old), su (regional) and sutu (old, rare).^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin subtus (“below, underneath”), a Latin adverb that later also served as a preposition.^{[4][5][3][2][6]} The Latin word was formed on sub (“under”) with the ending of intus (“within”).^[7][8] Older and popular Romanian also has the forms supt and subt.^[4]

The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian sum, Megleno-Romanian sup and Istro-Romanian su.^{[5][9][10][11][12]} Its Romance cognates include Italian sotto, Occitan sots, Catalan sots, French sous, Spanish so and Portuguese sob.^[5][13] The DHLF notes that the Latin form, rare in texts, must have been common in speech, since it lives on throughout Romance.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record of the word is from 1436, in a document.^[14] In Romanian texts it appears as supt in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century and in the later psalters.^[15] The Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578), MDA2's first record, uses it of darkness lying under the feet of God, the basic sense of a place below something.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

From the spatial sense of a position below, the preposition took on a temporal sense, “in the time of, under the rule of”: Tiktin glosses sub August as “under Augustus”.^[4][14] In old and popular use it also means “at the foot of, close by”: the Moldavian chroniclers wrote of armies camped subt cetate “before the fortress”.^[14] Abstract uses express dependence (sub comanda “under the command of”), cause (under the heat of the sun) and a quantity below a limit.^[4][3]

The old texts write supt, as the Bible of 1688 does.^[14] Șincai and the 19th-century writers wrote subt, and the dictionaries now give sub as the standard form.^[2][4]

Timeline

• 1436 – the first record, in a document.^[14]
• early 16th century – supt in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[15]
• c. 1573–1578 – suptu picioarele lui “under his feet” in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[3][2]
• 1581 – the Palia of Orăștie: „Luo bozii și-i puse supt paiele cămilelor” “she took the idols and put them under the camels' saddles”.^[2]
• 1648 – the New Testament: „Când erai supt smochin, te-am văzut” “when you were under the fig tree, I saw you”.^[2]
• 1688 – supt ceriu “under heaven” in the Bucharest Bible (Genesis 7:19).^[14]

Meanings

Preposition

1. under, below, beneath: in or to a place lower than something; with de, from under, with pe, along under: Pisica a ieșit de sub pat.^[4][3][1]
2. At the foot of, close to: sub poalele muntelui “at the foot of the mountain”.^[4][14]
3. During, in the time of: sub domnia lui “in his reign”; popularly, towards a time of day: sub seară “towards evening”.^[4][16]
4. Under the effect of, because of: Copacul s-a îndoit sub greutatea zăpezii.^[4][16]
5. Under the authority or command of; in phrases such as sub ochii “in the presence of”, sub pretext că “on the pretext that”, sub niciun chip “by no means”.^[4]
6. Below a number or limit, less than: Temperatura a scăzut sub zero.^[4][14]

Word family

• dedesubt

Related words

• sub-
• Aromanian sum
• Latin subtus

Usage notes

The prefix sub- (subsol, subdirector, subînțelege) is a separate element: DEX takes it from French sub- and Latin sub, and MDA2 says it was isolated from loans such as subacvatic and subalpin.^[4][3] Ciorănescu notes that it is joined both to words borrowed already compounded (subaltern from French subalterne) and to native Romanian words.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. sub
3. ^ 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, 1028
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1063
5. ^ a b c d 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. sub
6. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 991
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, 163
11. ^ Byhan, Arthur (1899), Istrorumänisches Glossar, Sechster Jahresbericht des Instituts für rumänische Sprache zu Leipzig: 174–366, p. 355
12. ^ Kovačec, August (1998), Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik (s gramatikom i tekstovima), Pula
13. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8402
14. ^ 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. sub
15. ^ 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 90:4
16. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional