ucidere

Forms

ucidere f (plural ucideri)^[1] In the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet it was written учидере.^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian ucide + -re: the long infinitive of the verb “to kill”, used as a noun.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The verb is from Latin occīdō (“to kill”).^[6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), in a passage of Acts (22:21 in Tiktin's reference): „şi lăsa spre uciderea lui şi străjuiia veşmentele celora ce ucidea elu” “and I consented to his killing and kept the clothes of those who killed him”.^[2][3][4]

Semantic evolution

From the first texts the noun means the act of killing and its result, a murder.^[4][3] Coresi's homilies of 1581 use it of Cain's killing of his brother, and the Bucharest Bible of 1688 has it 27 times in this form.^[4][7] The Slavonic–Romanian lexicons of the 17th century gloss Slavonic words for slaughter and murder with it.^[8]

MDA2 also records old senses: a heavy blow and a brawl, beside a mass killing.^[2] Phrases built on it name kinds of killing: Pontbriant's dictionary lists ucidere de tată “parricide” and ucidere cu petre “stoning”, and ucidere de sine was a rare term for suicide, sinucidere.^[9][2] The figurative uciderea timpului “killing time” is recorded too.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1563-1583 – uciderea in the Codicele Voronețean, the first record.^[2][3]
• 1581 – uciderea frățini-său “the killing of his brother” in Coresi's homilies.^[4]
• 1649 – in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[8]
• 1688 – 27 times in the Bucharest Bible.^[7]
• 1862 – ucidere cu petre “stoning” in Pontbriant's dictionary.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of killing and its result; a murder, an asasinat.^[5][1]
2. (law) The crime of taking a person's life.^[1][10]
3. Mass killing, slaughter.^[2]

Word family

• omucidere

Related words

• ucide
• ucigaș
• omor

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 Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1356
3. ^ 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. ucidere
4. ^ a b c d e Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. ucidere
5. ^ a b DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1166
6. ^ 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. ucide
7. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ieșirea 5:3
8. ^ 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. ucidere
9. ^ a b Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 758
10. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. ucidere