surpa

Forms

surpa (present surp, past participle surpat, third-person subjunctive surpe), 1st conjugation^[1][2] The old form surupa is in Moxa's chronicle: „Împăratul Constantin ... surupă casele idolilor” “Emperor Constantine ... pulled down the houses of the idols”.^[3][4] Dosoftei's verse psalter has it too: „De-am și surupatu-mă de râpă, Tu m-ai râdicat, Doamne” “even if I fell down the cliff, you raised me up, Lord”.^[3] Regional surupi and the old, rare suripa are also recorded.^[5][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *subrūpāre (“to undermine, bring down”), formed on rūpēs (“cliff, rock”) with sub- (“under”).^{[6][5][4][2][1]} The reconstruction goes back to Cihac, G. Meyer, Pușcariu and Pascu;^[6] Ciorănescu adds that no other Romance language kept this verb.^[6] Other prefixes on the same base gave Italian dirupare and Spanish derribar.^[6][1] Older proposals, Latin surripiare (Philippide), subrumpere (Crețu) and *surpere (Pascu), are rejected by Ciorănescu, and so is Cihac's Serbo-Croatian source.^[6]

The verb survives in all four branches: Aromanian surpu, Megleno-Romanian sărup and Istro-Romanian surpu.^[6][7][8] Aromanian also has a noun of the same spelling meaning “precipice”.^[7][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is in Coresi's Tetraevanghel of 1561, Luke 4:29: „Și duseră el până întru un vârf de munte ... să surpe el” “and they led him up to a mountain top ... to throw him down”.^[3] The first sense is thus “to hurl down with force”.^[3] MDA2 dates it from Coresi's Evanghelie cu învățătură of 1581, where a fence is pulled down.^[5][4]

Semantic evolution

From throwing down, the verb came to mean pulling down buildings and idols, and ruining or destroying: the Bible of 1688 has God bringing down Sodom and Gomorrah.^[3][10] The reflexive a se surpa is said of walls, houses and above all river banks and slopes that cave in as the ground wears away.^[2][11][5]

A figurative sense is to topple someone from power: Ion Ghica uses it of a deposed prince and Bălcescu of boyars brought down by the Phanariots, and a folk glossary records a se surpa “to lose the throne”.^[3][2][12] In popular speech the reflexive also means to get a hernia, the sense of the derivatives surpat and surpătură.^[2][6][13]

Timeline

• 1561 – in Coresi's Tetraevanghel (Luke 4:29), “to hurl down”, the first record.^[3]
• 1581 – in Coresi's Evanghelie cu învățătură, a fence pulled down.^[5][4]
• 1589 – surpă in Coresi's psalter of 1589 (Psalm 139).^[14]
• 1688 – in the Bucharest Bible, used of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.^[3][10]
• c. 1832 – the reflexive “to get a hernia” in Iordache Golescu's dictionary.^[4]
• 1862 – Pontbriant glosses it “to demolish, overthrow” and the reflexive “to get a hernia”.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (reflexive, of banks and slopes) To cave in as the ground wears away;^[2][1] (of walls and buildings) to collapse, fall down.^[2][1]
2. (transitive) To pull down, bring to the ground; to ruin, destroy.^[2][15]
3. (transitive, figurative) To topple someone from a privileged position; to undermine; by extension to do away with.^[2][1]
4. (reflexive, popular) To get a hernia.^[2][6]

Word family

• surpăcios
• surpat
• surpătură
• surpuș
• surupină

Related words

• Aromanian surpu
• râpă
• Latin rūpēs

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1080
3. ^ 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. surpa
4. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. surpa
5. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1073
6. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. surpa
7. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 995
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 258
9. ^ 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, 42
10. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gn 13:11
11. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 319
12. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov.; Speranția, Th. D. (1906–1908), Graiul nostru. Texte din toate părțile locuite de români, 2 vols., București: Socec, p. 211
13. ^ a b Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 719
14. ^ 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 139:11
15. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. surpa