trage

Forms

trage (first-person singular present trag, past participle tras, third-person subjunctive tragă) 3rd conjugation^[1][2] The old simple past was trașu “I drew”, as in the Psaltirea Scheiană; today it is trăsei.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *tragō (“to pull”), a popular form of trahō (“to pull, drag, haul”).^{[5][6][1][4][7]} DER cites Pușcariu and the REW for the form with /g/.^[5] The DHLF explains it as a remodelling of the verb on agō (“to drive, do”), with which it shared some senses.^[8]

It survives in all four branches: Aromanian trag, Megleno-Romanian trag and Istro-Romanian trǫgu.^[5][9][10] Its Romance cognates include Italian trarre, French traire, Catalan traure, Spanish traer and Portuguese trazer.^[5][6]

The Latin verb has no certain etymology.^[11][1] De Vaan finds its closest cognates in Celtic, such as Old Irish tráig (“ebb, beach”); a link with Proto-Germanic *draganą (“to drag”) is debated because the initial consonants do not match.^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb occurs in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, MDA2's first record.^[12][4] The New Testament of 1648 tells of a net cast into the sea „carele, deaca să împlu, trasără-l la margine” “which, when it was full, they drew to the shore”.^[7]

Semantic evolution

From “to pull, drag” the verb spread to almost every action of drawing: drawing wine from a cask, drawing a sword, ringing a bell by its rope, pulling off one's boots, drawing a line, and printing a book in so many copies.^[13][5] It also came to mean breathing in and smoking (a trage tutun), shooting a weapon, and taking a photograph.^[5][14][2] Intransitively it means to head for a place and, in older use, to stop or lodge at an inn; the reflexive a se trage means to descend or come from.^[5][1]

Mardarie's lexicon of 1649 and the other Slavonic–Romanian lexicons of the 17th century use trag to gloss Slavonic verbs of dragging.^[15] In Maramureș a trage means to sing or play a tune, which Ștef traces to drawing the bow of a fiddle.^[16] Romanian built on it trăsură “carriage”, trăsătură “stroke, feature” and trăgător “marksman”.^[5]

Timeline

• early 16th century – trage and trase in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[12][4]
• 1570 – tragi in Coresi's Psalter.^[17]
• 1648 – trasără-l “they drew it” in the New Testament of 1648.^[7]
• 1649 – trag glosses Slavonic verbs of dragging in Mardarie's lexicon.^[15]
• 1688 – tras, trase and trăgea in the Bucharest Bible.^[18]
• 1987 – a trage “to sing” recorded at Ieud in Maramureș.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To pull something or someone towards oneself or to one side.^[2][1]
2. (transitive) To drag or haul behind oneself: tractorul trage remorca “the tractor pulls the trailer”.^[2][13]
3. (transitive) To draw out, extract: to draw wine from a cask, a sword from its sheath.^[13][5]
4. (transitive) To inhale; to smoke.^[5][1]
5. (intransitive, with în or la) To shoot, to fire a weapon.^[1][2]
6. (transitive) To draw a line; to print copies; to take a photograph.^[5][1]
7. (transitive) To ring a bell by swinging it.^[1][13]
8. (intransitive, now uncommon) To stop or lodge somewhere; of a vehicle, to pull up.^[5][1]
9. (reflexive) To descend or come from; to stem from.^[5][1]

Word family

• trăgaci
• trăgător
• trăgătoare
• trăsătură
• trăsură
• tragere

Related words

• atrage
• distrage
• extrage
• retrage
• sustrage
• tracțiune
• Aromanian trag
• Latin trahō

Usage notes

Common idioms include a trage pe sfoară “to swindle”, a trage cu urechea “to eavesdrop”, a trage la răspundere “to call to account” and a trage de timp “to play for time”.^[2][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. 1135
3. ^ Candrea, I.-A. (1916), Psaltirea Scheiană comparată cu celelalte psaltiri din sec. XVI și XVII traduse din slavonește, vol. II: Glosarele, București: Socec, p. 396
4. ^ 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, 1249
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. trage
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8841
7. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. trage
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1042
10. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 297
11. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ 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 24:16
13. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. tráge
14. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 660
15. ^ a b 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. trag
16. ^ a b Ștef, Dorin (2021), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din județul Maramureș, 3rd ed., Baia Mare, p. s.v. tráge
17. ^ 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 31:12
18. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. FACEREA 19:10