umed

Forms

umed m or n (feminine singular umedă, masculine plural umezi, feminine/neuter plural umede)^[1] MDA2 records the old variants umăd and umid.^[2] Dosoftei has the feminine umădă: „roauă nu umădă” “dew that is not wet”.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin hūmidus (“wet, moist”).^{[4][2][5][6][1]} The older Latin spelling was ūmidus;^[1] Wiktionary explains the ⟨h⟩ as a hypercorrection after a false link with humus (“ground”).^[1] Nocentini derives the adjective from ūmeō (“to be wet”).^[7]

Ciorănescu names the Istro-Romanian form umid and compares Italian umido.^[4][8] Other Romance forms are French humide and Spanish húmedo.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 takes the first record from Dosoftei's lives of the saints, printed in Iași in 1682–1686, and Tiktin cites the same work under 1683.^[2][5] The sense is “wet, moist”.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The adjective describes what is wet or not yet dry, damp ground and air full of water vapour.^[9] Șincai wrote that each kind of wild tree chooses its own ground, „uscat sau umed”, “dry or wet”.^[3] Golescu warns that seed rots in soil that is too wet.^[3]

From wet eyes the word came to mean eyes full of tears, and then shining or tender eyes.^[9] Eminescu's „Făclie de veghe pe umezi morminte” “a vigil torch on damp graves” shows the poetic use of the plural umezi.^[5]

Timeline

• 1682-1686 – Dosoftei's lives of the saints, the first record.^[2][5]
• 1688 – the plural umede in the Bucharest Bible.^[10]
• 1801 – uméd “humidus” in Klein's dictionary.^[11]
• 1825 – the adjective umed and an adverb umed in the Lexicon of Buda.^[12]

Meanings

Adjective

1. wet, damp: that has been in a liquid or was covered or sprinkled with one and is not yet dry; of walls and houses, affected by rising damp.^[9][13]
2. Of the air or climate: humid, full of water vapour.^[9][13]
3. Of the eyes: full of tears; by extension shining, tender.^[9]

Word family

• umedos
• umezi
• umezeală

Related words

• umiditate
• Latin hūmidus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1368
3. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. umed
4. ^ a b 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. umed
5. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. umed
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4233
7. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ Popovici, Iosif (1909), Dialectele romîne din Istria II: texte și glosar, Halle a. S., p. 162
9. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1169
10. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Judecătorii 16:7
11. ^ Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 464
12. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 732
13. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. umed