veni

Forms

a veni (third-person singular present vine, past participle venit, third-person subjunctive vină), 4th conjugation^[1] The first person singular present is vin, in older and popular use viu; the subjunctive is să vină, older să vie; the imperative is vino, popularly vină.^[2] Regional speech has the past participle vint, as in a folk verse: „nu știu cum s-a-mpărțit, că de loc nu mi s-a vint” “I don't know how it was shared out, for nothing came to me at all”.^[3][2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin veniō (“to come”).^[4][2][5][1] The Latin verb comes from Proto-Indo-European *gʷm̥yéti, a zero-grade formation of *gʷem-, and is cognate with Ancient Greek βαίνω (baínō) and the English word come.^[1][6]

The verb survives in all four branches: Aromanian vin, Megleno-Romanian vin and Istro-Romanian viru.^[4][1][7] Its Romance cognates include Italian venire, French venir, Occitan venir, Spanish venir, Catalan vindre and Portuguese vir.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 dates the first record to the Hurmuzaki Psalter, of the early 16th century, where the present vine “comes” already occurs.^[2][8] Tiktin's first record is Neacșu's letter of 1521.^[3]

Semantic evolution

From “to come, approach” the verb developed the senses “to arrive”, “to visit”, “to follow, come after” and “to come from, originate”.^[5][4] Of rivers it means “to rise, flood”, as in a veni mare “to swell”.^[5][4] Of clothes it means “to fit”, and of a share it means “to fall to someone”, a use Tiktin quotes from a document of 1646.^[5][3] In popular speech a veni după cineva means “to marry someone”, said of a woman.^[5][4]

Its derivatives include venit “income”, viitor “future” and viitură “flood”.^[4] Tiktin explains viitor and the gerund viind as built anew on the stem of the subjunctive să vie, and Ciorănescu compares viitor with puitor from pune.^[3][4] Ciorănescu reports from Miklosich that Ruthenian wenit “rent” was borrowed from Romanian venit.^[4] The neologisms deveni, conveni and interveni contain the same Latin verb but came into Romanian later.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1500 – the Hurmuzaki Psalter, the first record.^[2][8]
• 1521 – Neacșu's letter.^[3]
• 1570 – the infinitive veni in Coresi's Psalter.^[9]
• 1646 – s-au venit “fell to the share” in a document on a boundary.^[3]
• 1688 – the Bucharest Bible uses veni 775 times.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To come: to move towards the speaker or the person spoken of; to approach a place.^[5][2][1]
2. To arrive, to reach a place or a person.^[5][4]
3. To call on someone, to visit; to present oneself.^[5][4]
4. To follow, to come after.^[5]
5. To come from, to originate: de unde vine cuvântul? “where does the word come from?”.^[5][4]
6. (of places and buildings) To be situated.^[5][4]
7. (of events) To happen, to occur.^[5][4]
8. (of clothes and shoes) To fit.^[5][4]
9. To fall to someone's share, to be due to someone.^[5][3]

Word family

• venit
• viitor
• viitură

Related words

• deveni
• conveni
• interveni

Usage notes

Du-te-vino, literally “go-come”, is a noun meaning “coming and going, constant traffic”;^[5][2] vino-ncoace, literally “come here”, means “charm, irresistible appeal”.^[5][2]

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 Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1453
3. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. veni
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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. veni
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1191
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 326
8. ^ 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 34:9
9. ^ 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 90:10
10. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Facerea 10:19