urât

Forms

urât m or n (feminine singular urâtă, masculine plural urâți, feminine/neuter plural urâte)^[1]

Etymology

It is the past participle from Romanian urî (“to hate”), used as an adjective, an adverb and a noun.^[2][3][4][1] Ciorănescu lists it among the derivatives of the verb.^[5] urî continues Vulgar Latin *horriō, which stands beside Latin horreō (“to bristle, dread”) and horrēscō.^[5][6][1] It survives south of the Danube in Aromanian urãscu, and Albanian urrej (“to hate”) shows the same change of meaning from the Latin verb.^[5][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Coresi's Psalter of 1570 has the plural urîții “those who hate (us)” in Psalm 43 and the noun urîtul “hatred” in Psalm 24.^[7][8] MDA2 dates both the noun and the adjective to the Psaltirea Scheiană of 1573–1578, where enemies hate the psalmist „cu uritul nedereptu” “with unjust hatred”.^[3][9]

Semantic evolution

The participle first meant “hated” and “one who hates”, then “hateful, unpleasant”: Nicolae Costin wrote that nothing is more hateful than war.^[4] Șăineanu explained the sense “ugly” by a confusion of the unbeautiful with the unloved and the unlikeable.^[10] The Lexicon of Buda (1825) gives Latin turpis and deformis, Hungarian rút and German häßlich.^[11] Today “ugly” is DEX's first sense, beside morally repulsive, improper and, of weather, gloomy.^[2] The noun moved from “hatred, aversion” (Varlaam, 1643) to the boredom and dread of loneliness: a-i fi urât “to be bored, to feel lonely”.^[9][2][12] The word was also a personal name, Urîtescul in 1604.^[13] Ukrainian borrowed it as an adjective meaning “ugly”.^[5]

Timeline

• 1570 – urîții and urîtul in Coresi's Psalter, the first record.^[7]
• 1573–1578 – the noun and the adjective in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[3]
• 1604 – the surname Urîtescul.^[13]
• 1643 – the noun “aversion” in Varlaam's Cazania.^[9]
• c. 1660 – urît in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[14]
• 1688 – urâtă “hated (wife)” in the Bucharest Bible.^[15]
• 1825 – “ugly, deformed” in the Lexicon of Buda.^[11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. ugly, lacking beauty or harmony; hideous.^[2][3]
2. Unpleasant, repulsive; of behaviour, improper, immoral; also grave, serious.^[2][3]
3. Of weather: gloomy, rainy and cold.^[2]

Adverb

1. Unpleasantly, badly, improperly;^[2][12] a se uita urât la cineva “to look at someone with hostility”.^[2][12]

Noun

1. A heavy mood caused by fear, loneliness or idleness; boredom;^[2][12] a ține cuiva de urât “to keep someone company”.^[2][12]
2. aversion, disgust towards someone or something.^[2][3]

Word family

• urâțenie
• urâți

Related words

• urî
• ură
• urâcios

Usage notes

From 1953 to 1993 the word was spelled urît, and old texts also have urit.^[3][16] In slang a urât is a policeman.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1174
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, 1384
4. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. urât 2
5. ^ 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. urî
6. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1390
7. ^ 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 43:9
8. ^ 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 24:20
9. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. urât 1
10. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 681
11. ^ a b 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. 738
12. ^ a b c d e Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 594
13. ^ a b Constantinescu, N. A. (1963), Dicționar onomastic romînesc, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. s.v. urît
14. ^ 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. urît
15. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. A DOUA LEAGE 21:15
16. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1383
17. ^ Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. urât