transporta

Forms

transporta (third-person singular present transportă, past participle transportat, third-person subjunctive transporte) 1st conjugation^[1] Older texts also have a present transportez; an old variant transpurta was shaped after purta: „transpurtînd compasul așa deschis” “moving the compass, opened thus” (Asachi).^[2][3] Railway workers' speech has ștraporta, ștramporta and ștranporta: „am de ștramportat două vagoane de lemne la gară” “I have two wagons of wood to haul to the station”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French transporter, a 19th-century neologism, with Latin transportō (“to carry across”) as a second model.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The DLR explains the old variant transpurta by association with purta “to carry”, the verb Romanian inherited from the same Latin base.^[3][6]

The Latin verb is formed trāns- (“across”) and portō (“to carry”) and meant “to carry across, ship across”, usually by water.^[7] French borrowed it from Latin about 1180, first in the sense “to move from one place to another”.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 dates the first record to before 1837, in a document of an economic records collection; the DLR quotes it: salt loaded on boats was to be carried across the Danube, „ca să o transporteze peste Dunăre”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The physical sense, to carry goods or people from one place to another, mostly by vehicle, is the core one.^[4][3] Negulici's glossary of neologisms (1848) already gives it together with the figurative sense of being carried away by joy, admiration or anger, which survives in literary use as “to send into raptures”.^[9][4] The reflexive “to go to a place” was common in the 19th century; its legal and administrative use, to go to the scene for an inquiry or inspection, is now dated.^[3][2]

Other senses were short-lived: “to translate” (in the form transpurta), “to transpose a piece of music”, “to deport” and, in law, “to transfer a right”.^[2][3] Șăineanu also records the transfer of a literary work to another stage, such as a French play adapted for the Romanian theatre.^[10]

Timeline

• before 1837 – first record, in an economic document.^[2][3]
• 1848 – in Negulici's glossary, with the figurative sense “to be carried away”.^[9]
• 1862 – in Pontbriant's dictionary, glossed with French transporter.^[11]
• 1929 – Șăineanu records the transfer of a play to another stage.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To transport, carry goods or people from one place to another, usually by vehicle: Camionul transportă cereale la port.^[4][1]
2. (reflexive) To go to the scene, for a judicial inquiry or an inspection.^[4][3]
3. (transitive, figurative, literary) To send someone into a state of rapture through strong emotion.^[4][5]

Related words

• purta
• Latin transportō

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 1257
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. transporta
4. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1139
5. ^ a b Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual
6. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b Negulici, I. D. (1848), Vocabular romînesc de toate vorbele streine întroduse pînă acum în limba romînească și de toate cuvintele ce s-ar mai putea introduce încă, București
10. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc
11. ^ Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich