vătăma

Forms

vătăma (third-person singular present vatămă, past participle vătămat, third-person subjunctive vatăme), 1st conjugation^[1] Regional present forms include vătam, vătămez and vetimi, and a regional variant bătăma is recorded.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin victimō (“to sacrifice”), according to DEX, MDA2, the DLR and Wiktionary.^[3][2][4][1] Ciorănescu also keeps this etymon, cited by Cipariu, Philippide, Byhan, Meyer, Pușcariu and others.^[5] He notes that the sense “to kill” already occurs in Medieval Latin, while “to ruin” suggests an intermediate “to sacrifice in vain”.^[5] Latin /kt/ would normally give Romanian /pt/; here the /p/ was dissimilated after the labial /v/, as in păta and boteza.^[5][1]

The etymology has a difficulty: the change of /i/ to /ă/ is regular in Romanian but not in Aromanian.^[5] For this reason Densusianu, Weigand and Pușcariu rejected it, and Tiktin calls this derivation phonetically impossible.^[5][6] Candrea and Weigand proposed a Latin *vatimō, from the Latin verb contaminated by vātēs (“seer”); the REW lists this form.^[5][7] Ciorănescu finds it no more likely, and Tiktin rejects any influence of the seer word.^[5][6] Philippide compared Albanian vuai, which Ciorănescu does not think related.^[5] The Latin verb is formed on victima (“sacrificial animal”).^[8][1]

It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian vatãm “to kill” and Megleno-Romanian vatăm.^[5][9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 dates the first record to the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (c. 1500–1520).^[2] The DLR quotes an old psalter for the sense “to strike, to wound”: „Tu vătămași toți vrăjbitorii miei în deșert” “you struck all my enemies”.^[4] In the 16th-century psalters it translates Slavonic verbs meaning “to strike down”.^[6]

Semantic evolution

In the old texts the verb means “to wound, to hurt”, as in Coresi: „vatăm și eu vindec” “I wound and I heal” (Deuteronomy 32:39).^[6] The Palia de la Orăștie (1581–1582) uses it of men who hurt a pregnant woman in a fight.^[4] The 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons give it for Slavonic words meaning “to harm, to damage”.^[11]

From physical harm the verb passed to damage to property and to moral injury, the senses of modern Romanian.^[3][2] In the reflexive it came to mean “to get a hernia”, known in Transylvania, Moldavia and Muntenia.^[5][3] Old figurative senses, “to pervert” and “to feel pain”, have died out.^[2] In Maramureș the reflexive means “to hurt oneself badly”.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – first record, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[2]
• c. 1551–1558 – the participle vătămat in the Psaltirea Voronețeană (Psalm 101:5).^[13]
• 1570 – vătămăm in Coresi's psalter (Psalm 43:19).^[14]
• 1581–1582 – used of an injury in a fight in the Palia de la Orăștie.^[4]
• 1649 – vatăm in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[11]
• 1688 – several forms in the Bucharest Bible, among them vătămară (Wisdom 10:8).^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. To harm or injure: to damage someone's health or body.^[3][2][1]
2. (reflexive, popular) To get a hernia.^[3][2][5]
3. To cause damage, loss or trouble; to hurt someone morally.^[3][2]

Word family

• vătămare
• vătămător
• nevătămător
• vătămătură
• vătămătoare

Related words

• Aromanian vatãm
• Latin victimō

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 Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1428
3. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1186
4. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. vătăma
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. vătăma
6. ^ 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. vătăma
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9171
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1101
10. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 1074
11. ^ 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. vatăm
12. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1925), Graiul și folklorul Maramureșului, București: Cultura Națională, p. 236
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 101:5
14. ^ 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 43:19
15. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Înțelepciunea lui Solomon 10:8