tragere

Forms

tragere f (plural trageri)^[1]

Etymology

It is the long infinitive of trage “to pull, draw”, formed from Romanian trage + -re, and serves as the verbal noun “the action of pulling and its result”.^{[2][3][4][1][5]} The verb continues trahō (“to draw, drag”), whose Romance descendants include Italian trarre, Spanish traer and French traire.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The noun first appears in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon of 1649, where it glosses a Slavonic word.^[7] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 has it once, in the Wisdom of Solomon.^[8] Tiktin dates it to 1703.^[4] In Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică it already has the figurative sense “attraction, inclination”: „Pofta și tragerea firii” “the appetite and the leaning of nature”.^[9][3]

Semantic evolution

The noun follows the many senses of the verb.^[4][10] Old texts used it for a retreat: Cantemir's Hronic speaks of „Tragerea romanilor din Dachia în Misia” “the withdrawal of the Romans from Dacia into Moesia”, and Tiktin also records the obsolete sense “origin”.^[4] Tragerea sufletului de moarte was the death agony, tragere pe roată breaking on the wheel, and tragere la judecată an old phrase for bringing someone to court.^[4][11][3]

The sense of inclination gave the phrase tragere de inimă “zeal, eagerness”, recorded in the dictionaries of the 19th century and common in the literature since.^[9][12] The early Latin–Romanian dictionaries render the word with Latin “tractio” and “inclinatio”.^[13][14] Tragere pe sfoară came to mean a trick or a swindle.^[9][10] Scriban records the military câmp de tragere “firing range”, then also called simply tragere.^[15] The technical sense of drawing metal into wire, bars or tubes came later.^[11][3]

Timeline

• 1649 – in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon, the first record.^[7]
• 1688 – in the Bucharest Bible (Wisdom 15:15).^[8]
• 1703 – Tiktin's date of the first record.^[4]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary glosses it “attraction, inclination”.^[13]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda has tragere a inimii spre ceva “inclination towards something”.^[16]
• 1862 – Pontbriant lists tragere la judecată “prosecution” and tragere de moarte “agony”.^[17]
• 1939 – câmp de tragere “firing range” in Scriban.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. The action of pulling or drawing something, and its result.^[2][3]
2. (popular) attraction, urge, inclination;^[2][18] tragere de inimă “zeal, eagerness”: Lucra cu tragere de inimă.^[2][18]
3. Taking out, extraction;^[2][18] tragere la sorți “drawing of lots”.^[2][18]
4. The working of a ductile material by stretching and thinning it into bars, tubes or wire.^[2][3]
5. The firing of a weapon, especially in military training; shooting: tragere la țintă “target shooting”, unghi de tragere “angle of fire”.^[2][1]

Related words

• trage
• tras
• Latin trahō

Usage notes

Tragere pe sfoară is a colloquial phrase for a hoax or swindle.^[3][11]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. 1135
3. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1250
4. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. trágere
5. ^ Wikționar (Romanian Wiktionary), ro.wiktionary.org
6. ^ Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 285
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Wisdom 15:15
9. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. tragere
10. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 661
11. ^ a b c Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 468
12. ^ Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. 2
13. ^ a b Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 459
14. ^ Pisone, Domițian (1865), Dictionariu românescu, latinescu, germanescu și francescu, lucrat după sistemul Lexiconului de Buda, București: Typografia Ioann Weiss, p. 385
15. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 1335
16. ^ 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. 714
17. ^ Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 746
18. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. tragere