vrea

Forms

third-person singular present vrea, past participle vrut, third-person subjunctive vrea; second conjugation^[1] The present has two sets of forms: vreau, vrei, vrea, vrem, vreți, vor for “want” and voi, vei, va, vom, veți, vor for the future auxiliary, with popular oi, ăi, o, om, ăți, or.^[2][3] Moldavian speech has vreu and vrau for vreau, and a subjunctive să vreie.^[4][5] A variant vroi (fourth conjugation) mixes vrea with voi.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *volēre (“to want”), the popular infinitive that replaced classical velle.^[6][5][2][7] The Latin verb goes back to *welh₁-.^[8][1] The verb survives as Aromanian voi and Istro-Romanian voi.^[6] Its Romance cognates include Italian volere, Occitan voler, Catalan voler and French vouloir.^[6][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 dates the first record to the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, and Tiktin's first date is Neacșu's letter of 1521.^[2][5] The Hurmuzaki psalter already has the past participle vrut, the simple perfect vrură and the future auxiliary va more than two hundred times.^[9][10][11] The Codicele Voronețean uses the verb with the derived noun: „vru se înțelegi vrearea lui” “he willed that you should know his will”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Tiktin derives the first person voi from an intermediate *vorĭu, not straight from Latin *voleo; the old second persons veri and veți from the Latin subjunctive forms velis and velitis;^[5] va from a short popular *volet;^[5] vom from volumus; and vor from volunt.^[5] Ciorănescu explains the loss of /r/ in the present and in the infinitive variant voi by the analogy of voie “will” and by the weak position of the consonant, as in *vo(r)iu > voi.^[6] Wiktionary reconstructs an older Romanian *vurea and notes that vreau, vrei, vrea were remade on the infinitive, while the older forms stayed with the future.^[1]

The core sense is “to intend, to have decided”; from it come “to demand, to expect” and “to wish for, to like”.^[3][6] DER also gives “to allow” and “to undertake”.^[6] With a negation the verb says that something will not work (nu vrea să ardă “it won't burn”), and in popular speech it means “to be about to”.^[3]

As an auxiliary the verb forms the future with the infinitive (voi merge), and the third person va with the subjunctive (va să vie) once served for every person;^[3][1] va să can also mean “must”.^[3][1] The old language had a past conditional made of the perfect am vrut and an infinitive: „De unde noi am vrut putea ști” “how could we have known”.^[5] Present forms of the verb survive inside other words: -va in cineva and cumva, oare (older vare) and ori (older veri).^[5][13]

The phrase vrea să zică (also va să zică, written vasăzică) means “it means” and, used as a conjunction, “so, therefore”.^[3][2] Ciorănescu's family of the verb includes vrere “will”, voință and bunăvoință, and binevoitor and răuvoitor “well-” and “ill-disposed”.^[6]

Timeline

• early 16th century – vrut, vrură and the future va in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[2][9]
• c. 1500–1520 – the noun vrere “will”, in the same psalter.^[14]
• 1521 – in Neacșu's letter.^[5]
• 1632 – voință “will” in Eustratie's Pravila.^[15]
• 1649 – forms such as vream and vrînd in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[16][17]
• 1688 – the future va about 9,000 times in the Bucharest Bible.^[18]

Meanings

Verb

1. To intend, to have decided to do something;^[3][2] vrea să zică “it means” or, as a conjunction, “so, therefore”.^[3][2]
2. To demand, to expect something from someone.^[3][6]
3. To wish for, to like;^[3][2] vrând-nevrând “willy-nilly”; reflexive, to wish to be something.^[3][2]
4. To consent, to agree.^[3]
5. (chiefly negative) To be able to: Mașina nu vrea să pornească. “The car won't start.”;^[3] (popular) to be about to.^[3]
6. (auxiliary) Forms the future tense: voi merge “I will go”;^[3][1] va with the subjunctive also forms the future, and va să means “must”.^[3][1]

Word family

• vrere
• voință
• bunăvoință
• binevoitor
• răuvoitor

Related words

• voi
• voie

Usage notes

A separate word vrea is the old form of the indefinite vreun “any”.^[2][19]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1517
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1208
4. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 1422
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. vrea
6. ^ 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. vrea
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9180
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
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 17:22
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 77:13
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 1:3
12. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. vrere
13. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2011–), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române (DELR), vol. I: A–B (2011), vol. II: C (2015–2018), București: Editura Academiei Române; continued online at delr.lingv.ro, p. s.v. cum
14. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. s.v. vrere
15. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. voință
16. ^ 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. vream
17. ^ 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. vrînd
18. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Facerea 1:29
19. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. vrea