trepăda

Forms

trepăda (third-person singular present treapădă, past participle trepădat, third-person subjunctive trepede), first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin trepidō (“to hurry about in alarm”), a verb formed on trepidus (“anxious, agitated”).^{[2][3][4][5][1][6][7]} The REW glosses the Latin verb “to run to and fro” and gives Romanian as its only direct continuation in Romance, beside a Sienese derivative.^[8] The neologism trepida “to vibrate” is a doublet borrowed later from the same Latin verb.^[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1632, in Eustratie's Pravila.^[9] Nicolae Costin's chronicle has it of travellers going back and forth: Germans „începuse a lua și vamă ... de la pământenii ce treceau și trepădau în Țara Ungurească” “had begun to take toll from the natives who crossed and went to and fro into Hungary”.^[5][9] MDA2's first record is this chronicle passage.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The old sense is going back and forth, running errands, often to no purpose: in a letter of 1741 it was hard „a trepăda la Nicorești pentru doauo pogoane” “to keep going to Nicorești for two acres”.^[5] Creangă's priests no longer „trepădau” to Socola, and Caragiale uses it of chasing round the antechambers of the Senate for votes.^[5] From this came the sense of restless agitation, “to fidget, not find one's place”.^[4][10]

Of horses it means “to trot”, as in Ghica's description of the middle horse trotting while the outer ones galloped.^[9][3] A popular sense is “to have diarrhoea”, recorded in a zoology handbook and in Pamfile.^[9][2] From it the plant trepădătoare (Mercurialis annua) was named, for its use against diarrhoea, like French foirolle.^[2] Other derivatives are treapăd “trot, running about” and trepăduș “errand boy”.^[2]

Transylvania has the variant trăpăda, used by Budai-Deleanu, and Tiktin records trepăta.^[9][5][2]

Timeline

• 1632 – Eustratie's Pravila, the first record.^[9]
• early 18th century – trepăda “went to and fro” in Nicolae Costin's chronicle.^[5][3]
• 1741 – „a trepăda la Nicorești” in a Moldavian letter.^[5]
• c. 1800–1812 – trăpădăm in Budai-Deleanu.^[5]
• 19th century – of horses, “to trot”, in Ghica.^[9]

Meanings

Verb

1. (popular) To run about restlessly from place to place, to bustle, to be agitated.^{[4][3][11][1]}
2. Of horses: to trot, also transitive, to make a horse trot.^[4][3]
3. To go somewhere often, usually to no purpose.^[11][5]
4. (popular) To have diarrhoea.^[3][11][2]

Word family

• treapăd
• trepădătură
• trepăduș
• trepădătoare

Related words

• trepida
• Latin trepidus

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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. trepăda
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, 1274
4. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1144
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. trepăda
6. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 102
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8890
9. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. trepăda
10. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 493
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. trepăda