turba

Forms

turba (third-person singular present turbează, past participle turbat, third-person subjunctive turbeze), first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin turbō (“to disturb, throw into confusion”), a verb formed on turba (“turmoil, crowd”).^{[2][3][4][5][1][6][7]} Pascu derived it from a *torvō formed on torvus (“grim, glaring”), which DER judges improbable.^[8][2]

It survives in all four branches: Aromanian turbu, Megleno-Romanian anturb and Istro-Romanian turbu.^[2][9] Its Romance cognates include Italian turbare, Occitan torbar, Catalan torbar, Spanish turbar and Portuguese torvar (“to hinder”); the REW also traces French trouver (“to find”) to it, at first “to stir up the fish”.^[2][6] For the change from “confuse” to “go mad”, Tiktin compares Albanian tërbohem (“to go mad”), beside which DER cites an Albanian tërboń.^[10][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1551–1553, in Matthew 8:32, where the swine rush into the sea.^[10] The Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century already has the participle turbatul (Psalm 90:6).^[11] MDA2's first record is Coresi's homiliary of 1581, with the reflexive in the sense “to lose one's head”: those who are distressed „se de pururea turbă” “are ever troubled”.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

The old reflexive kept the Latin sense of confusion: “to lose one's head, be thrown into turmoil”, of eyes “to cloud”, and of a people “to rise up”, as in 1822: „Norodul grecesc de câțiva ani s-au turbat” “the Greek people rose up a few years ago”.^[5][3] Of sheep, a se turba la cap means “to get the staggers” in regional speech.^[5]

Dosoftei already uses it of rage: an emperor „de mânie ... să turba” “raged with anger”.^[5] Mardarie's lexicon of 1649 glosses turbez with a Slavonic verb for raving.^[12] Of dogs and other animals it came to mean “to catch rabies”, the main modern sense, and the noun turbare names the disease.^[10][4] Transitively it means “to drive someone mad”, and colloquially a turba după ceva is “to be mad about something”.^[13][3] The present is turbez, with a popular turb.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – the participle turbatul in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (Psalm 90:6).^[11]
• 1551–1553 – the verb in a Gospel book (Matthew 8:32), the first record of the verb.^[10]
• 1581 – reflexive “to be troubled” in Coresi's homiliary.^[3][5]
• 1649 – turbez in Mardarie's lexicon.^[12]
• 17th century – “to rage with anger” in Dosoftei.^[5]
• 1822 – “to rise up” of the Greek people.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To catch rabies, to become rabid.^[4][3][1]
2. (figurative) To fly into a rage, to become furious, or transitively to madden someone.^[4][3][13]
3. (colloquial) A turba după ceva: to be mad about something.^[3]
4. (dated, reflexive) To lose one's head, to be thrown into confusion.^[3][5]

Word family

• turbă
• turbăciune
• turbat
• turbare

Related words

• tulbura
• tulbure
• perturba
• Aromanian turbu
• Latin turbō

Usage notes

Turba is not the articled form of the noun turbă: Romanian has a noun turbă “rabies”, a back-formation from the verb, and a separate noun turbă “peat”, which Antonescu's dictionary of 1875 glosses as French tourbe.^[2][14]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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. turba
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1301
4. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1154
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. turba
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8992
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 174
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1056
10. ^ 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. turba
11. ^ 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 90:6
12. ^ 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. turbez
13. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 521
14. ^ Antonescu, G. M. (1875), Dictionariu romanu-francesu, Bucuresci: Typografia Curții (Lucrători Associați), p. 321