suferi

Forms

suferi (present sufăr, third person suferă, past participle suferit), fourth conjugation.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *sufferīre, the popular form of sufferō (“to bear, endure”).^[2][1][3] Ciorănescu, MDA2 and the DLR start from the Latin verb itself.^[4][5][6] The Latin verb is formed from sub- and ferō (“to carry, bear”).^[7][1]

Romance has the same verb: Italian soffrire, Occitan sofrir, French souffrir, Catalan sofrir, Spanish sufrir and Portuguese sofrer.^[4][8] Bulgarian speakers in Transylvania borrowed it from Romanian.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to the Palia de la Orăștie of 1581–1582, in Genesis 6:3.^[9] MDA2 gives a document of 1587 published by Iorga.^[5] The early sense is “to bear, endure”, as in the Bucharest Bible of 1688: „Pentru tine am suferit ocară” “for thy sake I have borne reproach”.^[9][6]

Semantic evolution

From “to bear, endure” came “to tolerate, put up with” and “to allow”, the sense of nu-l pot suferi “I can't stand him”.^[9][4] The intransitive “to suffer, feel pain”, as in a suferi de stomac “to suffer from one's stomach”, is recorded in modern prose.^[9][10] The derivatives suferind and suferință were modelled on French souffrant and souffrance.^[4]

In old Moldavian texts the verb could also mean “to agree with someone, do them good”, of food.^[3]

Timeline

• 1581–1582 – first record, in the Palia de la Orăștie.^[9]
• 1587 – in a document published by Iorga.^[5]
• 1660 – sufăr in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[11]
• 1688 – suferi 29 times in the Bucharest Bible.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To suffer, to feel physical or mental pain;^[2][1] a suferi de “to suffer from” an illness; also to bear the unpleasant consequences of something.^[2][1]
2. (transitive and intransitive) To endure, bear, put up with; to undergo a punishment.^[2][5]
3. (transitive) To tolerate someone or something, to stand; mostly in the negative: nu-l pot suferi “I can't stand him”.^[2][1]
4. (transitive) To allow, permit, consent to.^[2]

Word family

• suferind
• nesuferit
• suferință
• suferire
• suferitor

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1069
3. ^ a b Costinescu, Mariana; Georgescu, Magdalena; Zgraon, Florentina (1987), Dicționarul limbii române literare vechi (1640–1780): termeni regionali, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 1, 275
4. ^ a b c d e 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. suferi
5. ^ 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, 1044
6. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. suferi
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8428
9. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. suferi
10. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 626
11. ^ 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. sufăr
12. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Job 4:2