teamă

Forms

teamă f (uncountable)^[1]

Etymology

It is a back-formation from Romanian teme (“to fear”), a noun made from the verb without a suffix, as DEX, MDA2, the DLR, Ciorănescu, Scriban and Graur explain it.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} The verb is inherited from Latin timeō (“to fear”).^[5]

Tiktin, and Pușcariu as Ciorănescu reports him, derived the noun instead from Vulgar Latin *tima, a noun formed on the same Latin verb, comparing Italian tema (“fear”);^[8][5][1] Wiktionary gives both explanations.^[8][5][1] Graur noted that every Romanian dictionary before him except Scriban set up this Latin form, which some had read in the Lex Utinensis.^[7] He sided with the REW, which takes the Romanian and Italian nouns as separate Romance formations: Latin verbs of the second conjugation formed nouns in -or, such as timor, while Romanian could form a suffixless noun from such a verb, as vază from vedea.^[7] Like other feminine nouns of this kind, the word has no plural, and temeri serves instead.^[7] DELI explains the Italian noun as a learned formation on the Latin verb, recorded from the end of the 13th century.^[9] Ungureanu lists parallels in Lombard, Tuscan, Romansh, Ladin, Venetian and Sardinian, as evidence for his view of Romanian as continuing late spoken Latin.^[10] Ciorănescu calls Roesler's derivation from Ancient Greek δεῖμα (deîma) improbable.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is Coresi's Tetraevanghel of 1561, at Luke 4:36, where fear comes upon the people who see Jesus cast out a spirit.^[8] MDA2 and the DLR date it from before 1652, in a letter printed in Gaster's chrestomathy: „fiindu-mi teamă că…” “since I feared that…”.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept the sense “fear”, mostly in the construction with the dative, mi-e teamă “I am afraid”;^[8][4] am teamă de cineva “I fear someone” is rarer.^[8][4] From the fear of something bad the sense widened to worry and unease, and mi-e teamă că… came to mean “I suspect, I think that…”, also in the regional speech of Muntenia.^[3][11][12] Dosoftei's verse psalter has au de teamă “they fear”.^[8] The Lexicon of Buda of 1825 glosses it with Latin timor and metus and Hungarian félelem.^[13] Tiktin records a diminutive, and MDA2 several old synonyms such as teamăt and temoare.^[8][3]

Timeline

• 1561 – Coresi's Tetraevanghel, Luke 4:36.^[8]
• before 1652 – fiindu-mi teamă in a letter in Gaster's chrestomathy.^[3][4]
• 1825 – the Lexicon of Buda glosses it “fear”.^[13]
• 1963 – Graur argues that the noun was formed in Romanian.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. fear: the unrest felt in the face of a danger or of harm that may come; frică: mi-e teamă de câini “I am afraid of dogs”.^[2][3][1]
2. worry, unease;^[3][11] mi-e teamă că… “I'm afraid that…, it seems to me that…”.^[3][11]

Related words

• teme
• temere
• temător
• temut
• frică

Usage notes

The noun has no plural;^[7] temeri, the plural of temere, is used instead.^[7]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1111
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, 1187
4. ^ 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. teamă
5. ^ 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. teme
6. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 1305
7. ^ a b c d e f g Graur, Alexandru (1963), Etimologii romînești, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
8. ^ 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. teamă
9. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
10. ^ Ungureanu, Dan (2024), Istoria limbii române, Chișinău: Cartier, p. 364
11. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. teamă
12. ^ Marin, Maria; Mărgărit, Iulia, Glosar dialectal. Muntenia, București: Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”, p. 420
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. 700