suspin

Forms

suspin n (plural suspine)^[1] Besides the plural suspine, older and literary texts use suspinuri: „adînci suspinuri împrecurma toate cuvintele” “deep sighs cut off every word”, in Pleșoianu.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is a back-formation from Romanian suspina (“to sigh”), according to DEX, the DLR and MDA2.^[3][2][4] The verb continues suspīrō (“to sigh”).^[5][6] Ciorănescu adds that the deverbal noun may be older than Romanian, and Tiktin treats it as Common Romance, a noun from the verb that replaced suspīrium (“sigh”).^[5][7] Pușcariu allowed the sense “sigh” to continue the Latin noun directly, and Scriban, Șăineanu and Wiktionary give that source too.^{[8][9][10][1]}

The Romance nouns are Italian sospiro, Occitan sospir, Catalan suspir and French soupir.^[5] Papahagi derives Aromanian suschir, which keeps the Latin /r/, from the Latin noun.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, at Psalm 6: „Trudii-mă cu suspinul mieu” “I am weary with my sighing”.^[4][2] Tiktin gives the same psalm in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The sense has stayed close to the start: a deep, drawn-out breath that betrays grief, and in the plural the short broken breaths of hard weeping.^[4][3] Coresi already wrote of the weight of someone's sighs, and the Psaltirea Scheiană has the sighs of the prisoners in Psalm 101.^[2][12] The phrase a-și da ultimul suspin means “to die”.^[3] In Transylvania and the Banat the word also names broken wind in horses, a sense the Lexicon de la Buda gives as “asthma” in 1825.^[4][13][7]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – suspinul “my sighing” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (Psalm 6).^[4][2]
• 1570 – suspinele in Coresi's psalter (Psalm 101).^[12]
• c. 1573-1578 – suspinule in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[12]
• 1688 – suspinul in the Bucharest Bible.^[14]
• 1825 – “sigh” and “asthma” in the Lexicon de la Buda.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A sigh: a deep, audible, drawn-out breath, caused mostly by grief;^[3][4][1] a-și da ultimul suspin “to breathe one's last”.^[3][4][1]
2. A sob: a short broken breath that comes with hard weeping: Copilul vorbea printre suspine.^[3][4][1]
3. (regional) Broken wind, asthma in horses.^[3][4]

Related words

• suspina
• Aromanian suschir

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. suspin
3. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1081
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1077
5. ^ 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. suspina
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8489
7. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. suspin
8. ^ Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 157
9. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 1272
10. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 632
11. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 997
12. ^ a b c 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 101:21
13. ^ a b Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 689
14. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Genesis 3:16