urî

Forms

urî (third-person singular present urăște, past participle urât; 4th conjugation)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *horriō, a fourth-conjugation form of Latin horreō (“to bristle, to shudder”) and horrēscō (“to bristle, to shudder”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} Romanian conjugates it with the infix -esc, as many verbs of this class.^[2][1] The Latin verb is from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰrs-eh₁- (“to be stiff, surprised”).^[6]

The verb survives south of the Danube as Aromanian urãscu.^[2][7] Wiktionary compares the same shift from fear to hate in Albanian urrej (“to hate”) and Occitan orrir (“to hate, to despise”), and Ciorănescu, after Philippide, also compares the Albanian verb.^[1][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2's first record is the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (c. 1500–1520), where the DLR reads „urrit-ai toți păşitorii de la dereptățile tale” “you have hated all who stray from your statutes”.^[4][8] Coresi's psalter of 1570 has urî and urâi.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

The sense “to hate” is as old as the records, and the DLR quotes it from the 16th century on, in Moxa's chronicle and Dosoftei's psalter.^[8] An impersonal reflexive developed beside it: mi se urăște “I am tired of it, I am bored”, and a i se urî cu viața “to be weary of life”.^[3][2]

Romanian derived ură “hatred”, urât “ugly, repulsive”, urâcios “disagreeable, sullen”, urâciune “hatred, ugliness”, urâți “to make ugly” and urâțenie “ugliness”.^[2] Ciorănescu, after Candrea, notes that Ruthenian borrowed urât as its word for “ugly”.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – the first record, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[4][8]
• c. 1551–1558 – ura in the Psaltirea de la Voroneț.^[11]
• 1570 – urî and urâși in Coresi's psalter.^[9][12]
• 1589 – urăsc in Coresi's psalter of that year.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. To hate, to feel enmity or strong aversion towards someone or something.^[3][4][1]
2. Impersonal reflexive, with the dative: to be tired of, to be bored with someone or something: Mi s-a urât de atâta ploaie. “I'm sick of all this rain.”^[3][2]

Word family

• ură
• urât
• urâcios
• urâțenie

Related words

• Aromanian urãscu
• Latin horreō

Usage notes

MDA2 and the DLR record a regional verb spelled the same, meaning “to pamper oneself; to be affected in manner or speech”, which they compare with German huren.^[4][8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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
3. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1176
4. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1390
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4185
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 1063
8. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. urî
9. ^ 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 54:1
10. ^ 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 25:5
11. ^ 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 143:15
12. ^ 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 5:6
13. ^ 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 68:18