trebui

Forms

trebui (third-person singular present trebuie, colloquial trebe or tre’, rare trebuiește; past participle trebuit), 4th conjugation^[1] Regional variants begin trăb-, trâb-, treab- and trib-, and the third person present also appears as trebă, trebe and trebu.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic трѣбовати (trěbovati, “to need, to be in need of”).^{[3][2][4][5][1][6]} The Slavonic verb meant “to need” and, in one text, “to bring offerings”.^[7] It belongs with трѣба (trěba, “sacrifice”) and goes back to the root Proto-Slavic *terb-.^[8][1] Vasmer explains the sense “need, duty” from an older “to clear land”, and also cites the view that compares the root with Baltic, Indo-Iranian, Greek and Germanic words for “to satisfy, to profit, to need”.^[8]

The Romanian noun treabă “business, need” is a separate loan from Slavonic, and Ciorănescu lists the verb among the words of its family.^[3] The verb also exists in Megleno-Romanian, where Ciorănescu cites Megleno-Romanian tribuiri.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the second person trebuieşti in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, at Psalm 15.^[9] There, and in Coresi's psalter, the verb is transitive and personal, “to need”: „Bunătățile meale nu trebuiaști” “you do not need my goods”, said to God.^[4] MDA2 dates it from Coresi's Cazania of 1581, where the person who needs something is in the dative: „Celuia ce nu-i trebuiaște mult, acela nu poate fi lacom” “he who does not need much cannot be greedy”.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

Old Romanian used the verb in two constructions.^[4] In the older one it was an ordinary transitive verb, “to need, to use”: Coresi's Gospel has „Ce încă trebuim mărturii?” “why do we still need witnesses?”.^[4] In the other, which became the rule, the thing needed is the subject and the person who needs it is in the dative, „îmi trebuie” “I need”.^[4][5] The transitive verb is now obsolete, and MDA2 also records an old sense “to do, to perform”, which it explains by the influence of treabă.^[2][4]

From “to be needed” came the impersonal use with să or, in old texts, an infinitive: trebuie să “it is necessary that, one must”.^[4][5] Old texts and colloquial speech often make the verb agree with its logical subject instead: the Bible of 1688 has „Eu trebuiesc să mă botez de tine” “I need to be baptized by you”, and Tiktin records modern trebuim să ascultăm beside the impersonal trebuie să ascultăm “we must obey”.^[4] A further sense, “to be probable, must be”, expresses a conclusion: trebuie că or trebuie să fie “it must be”.^[4][5]

Set phrases grew out of the dative construction: cum trebuie “properly”, așa-ți trebuie “it serves you right” and atâta i-a trebuit “that was all he was waiting for”.^[5][2] The noun trebuință “need” and its family were formed on the verb.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – trebuieşti in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[9]
• 1570 – trebuiești in Coresi's psalter.^[9]
• 1581 – nu-i trebuiaște “he does not need” in Coresi's Cazania.^[2][6]
• 1649 – trebuie and trebuiesc in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[10]
• 1688 – personal eu trebuiesc să mă botez “I need to be baptized” in the Bucharest Bible.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, with the person in the dative) To be needed; with a dative, to need: Îi trebuie un medic. “He needs a doctor.”^[5][2][4]
2. (impersonal, with să) To be necessary or obligatory;^[5][2][1] trebuie să “one must, have to”: Trebuie să ne grăbim. “We have to hurry.”^[5][2][1]
3. (impersonal) To be probable or likely, with să: Trebuie să fi plecat deja. “He must have left already.”^[5][2]
4. (obsolete, transitive) To need, to use.^[4][2]

Word family

• trebuință
• trebuincios
• netrebuincios
• întrebuința

Related words

• treabă
• Old Church Slavonic трѣбовати (trěbovati)

Usage notes

The verb is normally used only in the third person, trebuie, trebuia, a trebuit; a first person trebui or trebuiesc is rare.^[5][4] The colloquial short forms trebe and tre’ are common in speech.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1268
3. ^ a b c d 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. treabă
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. trebui
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1142
6. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. trebui
7. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
8. ^ a b Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress, p. 4, 96
9. ^ 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 15:1
10. ^ 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. trebui