# The Romanian verb for ‘to walk’ comes from the Latin for ‘to sink’

Romanian words have kept, with small changes, the shape they had a thousand or two thousand years ago. Their meanings have moved. The Romanian verb for cuddling a child, a dezmierda, began as a Latin verb for cleaning. The verb for researching, a cerceta, comes from one meaning ‘to go round’. The verb for leaving, a pleca, meant folding.

Below are 49 words, grouped by what they do. Each one shows the older meaning, today’s meaning, and the dictionary the explanation comes from.

## What the asterisk means

Every word has two lines: then, the meaning of the word it came from, and now, what it means today. Below them is the story, told only as far as the sources go, and the dictionaries it comes from.

When a Latin form carries an asterisk, like *dismerdare, it has not been found in any text. Linguists rebuilt it from the Romanian word and its relatives in the other Romance languages. The reconstruction can be very secure, but it is an inference, not a reading. Where the dictionaries disagree, the word is marked ‘disputed’ and the page says who holds which view.

## The Romanian for ‘cuddle’ began with a cloth

Romanian’s words for tender gestures first meant cleaning, spells and pain. Some came from Latin, some from Slavic, and several go back to Latin forms that nobody ever wrote down.

### a dezmierda

- then: *dismerdare ‘to clean of dung’
- now: to caress, to pet

The Latin verb has not been found in any text. Linguists rebuilt it from dis-, ‘off, away’, and merda, ‘dung’, a word Horace and Martial use. The Romanian DEX and Ciorănescu’s etymological dictionary give the same origin, following Pușcariu, Tiktin and Densusianu.

August Scriban’s dictionary of 1939 explains the Latin *dismerdare as ‘to take out of the dirt, to pet so it stops crying, said of babies’. That is an explanation, not a sense found in texts. Ciorănescu gives no explanation of his own and points only to a desfăta, ‘to delight’.

Scriban 1939 · dexonline: desmierda (DEX ’09, DER, Scriban) · Lewis & Short, merda

### a alinta

- then: *allentare ‘to make soft and pliant’
- now: to pamper, to fondle

DEX derives it from a rebuilt Latin verb, *allentare, from lentus, ‘soft, pliant’. Its relatives in Italian, Provençal and Old French kept the sense ‘to loosen, to slacken’. Ciorănescu also cites Candrea and Densusianu’s explanation, from lenis, ‘gentle’. If it comes from lentus, the sense moved from things to people, as it did in Romanian blând, ‘gentle’, from Latin blandus.

dexonline: alinta · Lewis & Short, lentus

### a mângâia

- then: *manganeare ‘to use charms and potions’
- now: to caress; to console

DEX and Ciorănescu derive it from a rebuilt Latin verb, *manganeare, taken from Greek manganeúō. The standard Greek dictionary, Liddell and Scott, translates it ‘to use charms or philtres’, said of Circe. Ciorănescu glosses it ‘to use fermented drinks’, which looks like a mistranslation. No source explains how it came to mean a caress. The first sense Ciorănescu gives is ‘to console’.

LSJ, μαγγανεύω · dexonline: mângâia

### a amăgi

- then: *ammagire ‘to bewitch’
- now: to delude, to lure

The first sense Ciorănescu gives is ‘to bewitch, to cast spells’. The word comes, through a rebuilt Latin verb, from Greek mageúō, ‘to enchant’, from the family of magus, a magician. Whoever bewitched you also fooled you, and the sense of fooling is the one that stayed.

dexonline: amăgi

### a săruta

- then: salutare ‘to greet’
- now: to kiss

Romanian săruta, ‘to kiss’, and saluta, ‘to greet’, are the same Latin word, salutare, ‘to wish health, to greet’. Romanian inherited the first and borrowed the second much later, from books. Ciorănescu gives ‘to greet’ as the first sense of săruta, and the noun sărutat once also meant ‘a greeting’.

dexonline: săruta · Lewis & Short, saluto

### dor

- then: dolus ‘pain’
- now: longing for someone or something far away

Romanian dor, ‘longing’, is related to a durea, ‘to hurt’. It comes from a spoken-Latin dolus, ‘pain’, formed from dolere, ‘to hurt’. It is not the classical Latin dolus, which means ‘trickery’. The first sense Ciorănescu gives is ‘pain, torment, grief’. French deuil, ‘mourning’, comes from the same word.

dexonline: dor

### a zâmbi

- then: zǫbŭ ‘tooth’
- now: to smile

DEX links a zâmbi, ‘to smile’, directly to Slavic zǫbŭ, ‘tooth’, and to Bulgarian zăbja se. MDA2 gives a rebuilt Old Slavic form as the source and compares a Bulgarian verb meaning ‘to grin’. Either way, the root is the word for tooth.

dexonline: zâmbi · Proto-Slavic *zǫbъ

### drag

- then: dragŭ ‘precious, costly’
- now: dear, beloved

Slavic dragŭ meant both ‘costly’ and ‘beloved’, and Russian dorogoi still means both. Romanian kept only the second.

dexonline: drag · Proto-Slavic *dorgъ

### scump

- then: skǫpŭ ‘stingy’
- now: expensive; dear

Scump has also meant ‘stingy’. The proverb scumpul mai mult păgubește, ‘the stingy man loses more’, is about a miser, not about goods, and DEX still lists ‘stingy’ as an old and popular sense. Romanian invented nothing here: Slavic skǫpŭ already had both senses, as Bulgarian skăp does today. Together with drag it makes a pair, since both words can now mean ‘beloved’.

dexonline: scump · Proto-Slavic *skǫpъ

## To research is to go round in circles

The Romanian verbs for moving through the world began as other gestures: sinking, folding, breathing on something, going round it. Some of these shifts happened only in Romanian. Others appear in Spanish or Italian too, so they had already happened in spoken Latin.

### a cerceta

- then: circitare ‘to go round and round’
- now: to examine, to research

Circitare is a written Latin word, not a rebuilt one: Seneca uses it. It comes from circus, ‘circle’. Old glossaries translate it into Greek as ‘to go around’, and DEX explains it as ‘to prowl round’. Ciorănescu notes that the verb survived only in Romanian.

No source traces the path to ‘research’ step by step. But the Romanian Academy’s shorter dictionary, MDA2, gives ‘to surround’ as the first sense of a cerceta, and ‘to visit’ as an old one. Researching a problem in Romanian is, literally, walking round it.

dexonline: cerceta · Lewis & Short, circito

### a merge

- then: mergere ‘to sink, to plunge’
- now: to walk, to go

Latin mergere means ‘to dip, to plunge, to sink’, which is where English immerse comes from. Nobody disputes the origin. How it came to mean walking is harder to say. Ciorănescu supposes a middle sense, ‘to fall’, which he hears in a line by the storyteller Ion Creangă: vă croiesc de vă merg petecele, roughly ‘I’ll thrash you till your rags fly’.

This is a hypothesis, not a documented chain. Ciorănescu also compares Albanian mergoń, ‘to remove’, and a Sardinian verb meaning ‘to push’.

dexonline: merge · Lewis & Short, mergo

### a pleca

- then: plicare ‘to fold’
- now: to leave, to set off

Plicare means ‘to fold, to bend’. The old sense survives in Romanian a se apleca, ‘to bend down’. Spanish llegar and Portuguese chegar come from the same verb, and they mean ‘to arrive’. So one Latin word came to mean ‘to leave’ in Bucharest and ‘to arrive’ in Madrid.

How folding became leaving is disputed. Pușcariu and Scriban think of folding up the tent before a journey, like French plier bagage, ‘to pack up’. Tiktin thinks of ‘bending towards something’. Corominas starts from applicare, ‘to head towards’. Ciorănescu thinks it first meant ‘to turn back’.

dexonline: pleca · Lewis & Short, plico

### a ajunge

- then: adiungere ‘to join, to yoke together’
- now: to arrive; to be enough

Adiungere means ‘to add, to join, to bind to something’, and literally it was said of cattle put under the yoke. DEX translates it ‘to unite, to stick together’. Among the first senses Ciorănescu gives for the Romanian verb are ‘to coincide’ and ‘to catch up with someone’. The dictionaries do not explain the step to ‘to arrive’.

dexonline: ajunge · Lewis & Short, adjungo

### a afla

- then: afflare ‘to breathe on’
- now: to find out

DEX translates afflare as ‘to blow towards something, to touch with the breath’. Spanish hallar and Portuguese achar, ‘to find’, come from the same verb. Ciorănescu concludes that the meaning had changed before Romanian existed, in spoken Latin.

Why it changed is disputed. Schuchardt and, according to Ciorănescu, most modern philologists think of a hunting dog sniffing until it finds its quarry. Ciorănescu is not convinced and proposes ‘it breathes, so it exists’, hence Romanian se află, ‘is located’.

dexonline: afla · Lewis & Short, afflo

### a aștepta

- then: *astectare ‘to look at attentively’
- now: to wait

The base form, aspectare, ‘to look at attentively, with longing’, is attested. The form Romanian comes from directly, *astectare, is rebuilt. Italian aspettare, ‘to wait’, took the same road: whoever waits keeps looking down the road.

dexonline: aștepta · Lewis & Short, aspecto

### a căuta

- then: captare ‘to try to catch’
- now: to look for

The origin is uncertain. DEX gives a rebuilt *cautare. Ciorănescu calls it ‘a word hard to explain’ and prefers captare, ‘to try to seize, to chase’. By late Latin that verb had come to mean ‘to look’: Isidore of Seville writes cattat, id est videt, ‘cattat, that is, he sees’. From looking, it came to mean looking for.

dexonline: căuta · Lewis & Short, capto

### a culca

- then: collocare ‘to place, to put in position’
- now: to put to bed, to lie down

Collocare means ‘to place together, to arrange, to put in position’, the root of English collocate. French coucher comes from the same verb and also ended up in bed.

dexonline: culca · Lewis & Short, colloco

### a se grăbi

- then: grabiti ‘to grab, to seize’
- now: to hurry

Ciorănescu derives it from Slavic grabiti, ‘to seize, to rob’, a relative of English grab. DEX gives Bulgarian grabja (se) as the source. Ciorănescu notes that only Romanian turned grabbing into hurrying, and compares Latin rapidus, from rapere, ‘to seize’. Romanian repede, ‘fast’, comes from there too.

dexonline: grăbi · Proto-Slavic *grabiti

## The fool was once a plain man, and the proud man was once wise

Words about the mind shift easily, because people are judged by what they do. In Romanian the plain man became the fool, the wise man became the proud one, and the man who was awake became the clever one.

### a învăța

- then: *invitiare ‘to get into a habit’
- now: to learn; to teach

The Latin verb is rebuilt, from vitium, ‘flaw, bad habit’. That does not make learning a vice. The first sense given by Ciorănescu and MDA2 is ‘to accustom, to get used to’, as in its relatives in Italian and Provençal. The old noun învăț still means ‘habit, quirk’: a horse that is învățat has a habit, good or bad.

dexonline: învăța · Lewis & Short, vitium

### deștept

- then: dispectare ‘to open one’s eyes’
- now: clever

The first sense DEX still gives is ‘not asleep; awake’, kept in a se deștepta, ‘to wake up’. The step from awake to clever happened in Romanian. The Latin root is disputed. The 2009 DEX and Ciorănescu give dispectare, ‘to open the eyes’. The 1998 DEX, Pușcariu and Meyer-Lübke give a rebuilt *de-excitare, ‘to rouse’.

dexonline: deștept · Lewis & Short, dispecto

### prost

- then: prostŭ ‘simple, common’
- now: stupid; poor-quality

Slavic prostŭ means ‘simple, straight’, like Russian prostoi today. The old sense survives in soldat prost, a private without rank, and MDA2 records an old sense, ‘of humble social standing’. Over time the plain man became the fool.

dexonline: prost · Proto-Slavic *prostъ

### mândru

- then: mǫdrŭ ‘wise’
- now: proud; handsome

In the New Testament printed at Bălgrad (Alba Iulia) in 1648, the Magi are mândrii de la răsărit, ‘the wise men from the east’. The word comes from Slavic mǫdrŭ, ‘wise’, like Russian mudryi. The lexicographer Lazăr Șăineanu explained the shift by the man who thinks himself wise and grows arrogant. Not every source gives that explanation.

New Testament, Bălgrad 1648 · dexonline: mândru · Proto-Slavic *mǫdrъ

### tâmpit

- then: tǫpŭ ‘blunt’
- now: dim-witted

Tâmpit, ‘dim-witted’, comes from a tâmpi, and that from tâmp, from Slavic tǫpŭ, ‘blunt’. DEX still gives a tâmpi an old and regional sense, ‘to go blunt, to chip’. The metaphor is not Romanian: Russian tupoi still means both ‘blunt’ and ‘stupid’, much as English dull describes a blade and a mind.

dexonline: tâmpi · Proto-Slavic *tǫpъ

### cuvânt

- then: conventus ‘a gathering, an assembly’
- now: word; promise

Latin conventus means ‘assembly’, and conventum ‘agreement’; English convention comes from the same root. Ciorănescu shows that the same path, from ‘gathering’ to ‘talk’, appears in Albanian (kuvënt, ‘conversation’), modern Greek (kouvénta) and Serbian (zbor). Some linguists, such as Berneker and Sandfeld, explain it by a common Balkan background.

dexonline: cuvânt · Lewis & Short, conventus

### a înșela

- then: in-sellare ‘to saddle a horse’
- now: to deceive; to cheat on

DEX gives an old first sense, ‘to saddle a horse’, and derives it from Latin in-sellare, from sella, ‘seat, saddle’. Ciorănescu thinks it is a single word, because several Romanian verbs say ‘to fool someone’ as ‘to put something on them’: a potcovi, ‘to shoe’, and a încălța, ‘to put boots on’.

Many linguists, among them Miklosich, Weigand and Pușcariu, think these are two different words. For them, a înșela meaning ‘to deceive’ comes from a Slavic word meaning ‘profit’. The Romanian Academy’s shorter dictionary, MDA2, keeps them apart.

dexonline: înșela · Lewis & Short, sella

### a se uita

- then: *oblitare ‘to forget’
- now: to look at

A uita, ‘to forget’, comes from Latin oblitus, ‘forgotten’, the source of French oublier. The surprise is the reflexive a se uita, which means ‘to look’. Ciorănescu thinks it is the same verb: someone who forgets themselves stands still, eyes fixed on something. He compares Spanish fijarse. Other linguists think these are two words with different origins.

dexonline: uita

### a greși

- then: grěšiti ‘to sin’
- now: to make a mistake

In Slavic the verb is made from grěxŭ, ‘sin’. The first sense Ciorănescu gives is ‘to sin’, and DEX still lists it. In the language of the church, the greșalele noastre of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘our trespasses’, are sins, not errors of arithmetic.

dexonline: greși · Proto-Slavic *grěšiti

## The Romanian word for work once meant the torments of hell

In old Romanian, muncile iadului were the torments of hell, not its jobs. The verb for earning started from ‘to correct’, and the leu is named after a foreign coin.

### muncă

- then: mǫka ‘torment, torture’
- now: work, labour

Slavic mǫka means ‘torment’, like Russian muka today. The sense is well attested in old Romanian texts. The sixteenth-century printer Coresi writes of munca de vecie, ‘eternal torment’. The New Testament of 1648 says the rich man of the parable was ‘in hell… in muncă’. Budai-Deleanu’s mock epic Țiganiada has the line Văzui muncile iadului toate, ‘I saw all the torments of hell’.

DEX still lists ‘to torture’ for the verb a munci, marked old and popular. The sense of work came later.

Coresi; New Testament, 1648; Budai-Deleanu · dexonline: muncă · Proto-Slavic *mǫka

### a câștiga

- then: castigare ‘to correct, to chastise’
- now: to earn; to win

Castigare, from castus, ‘pure’, means ‘to set right by word or deed, to punish’; English chastise comes from it. So do French châtier and Spanish castigar, both ‘to punish’. In Romanian punishment did not turn straight into profit. The first sense Ciorănescu gives is ‘to raise, to look after’, and the nouns câștig and câștigă once meant ‘care’. Ciorănescu compares Old Sardinian castigare, ‘to keep’.

dexonline: câștiga · Lewis & Short, castigo

### a lucra

- then: lucrare ‘to gain, to make a profit’
- now: to work

Here the dictionaries contradict each other. DEX derives it from lucubrare, ‘to work at night by lamplight’. It is an attractive story, but Ciorănescu says it ‘does not seem possible’. He, Pușcariu and MDA2 derive it from lucrare (classical lucrari), ‘to gain’, a relative of lucrum, ‘profit’, the root of English lucre and lucrative.

MDA2’s first, old sense is precisely ‘to gain’. Ciorănescu calls the move from gain to work a normal one and compares French travailler.

dexonline: lucra · Lewis & Short, lucror

### a trăi

- then: trajati ‘to last’
- now: to live

Slavic trajati means ‘to last, to endure’. The old sense is still visible in trainic, ‘durable’. Ciorănescu considers unlikely another explanation, from Latin trahere, ‘to pull’.

dexonline: trăi · Proto-Slavic *trajati

### ceas

- then: časŭ ‘an hour, a stretch of time’
- now: a clock, a watch

Slavic časŭ means ‘hour, time’. The first sense in DEX is still ‘a stretch of sixty minutes’, as in un ceas de mers pe jos, ‘an hour’s walk’. The name for the time then passed to the device that measures it.

dexonline: ceas · Proto-Slavic *časъ

### leu

- then: arslanlı ‘the thaler with a lion’
- now: Romania’s currency

The Romanian leu, literally ‘lion’, is named after a foreign coin: the thaler with a lion on it, which the Turks called arslanlı, ‘with a lion’, and the Germans Löwentaler. DEX and Ciorănescu say the name was translated from Turkish. MDA2 dates the first record to 1651. The leu has been Romania’s official currency since 1867.

dexonline: leu

## The Romanian word for woman once meant the whole household

For people and their places, Romanian took words that meant something else: a whole household, a beard, a hall of justice in the Roman forum.

### femeie

- then: familia ‘the whole household’
- now: woman; wife

Latin familia did not mean ‘family’ in today’s sense. Lewis and Short specify that it was the slaves and servants of a house, all the people of a household. In old Romanian texts femeie can still mean ‘family’, ‘wife and children’ or even ‘the children of a family’. From ‘wife and children’ only the wife remained, and then any woman.

Ciorănescu notes that this shift happened only in Daco-Romanian, the Romanian north of the Danube. In Albanian, fëmijë means ‘child’.

dexonline: femeie · Lewis & Short, familia

### bărbat

- then: barbatus ‘bearded’
- now: man; husband

Barbatus means ‘bearded’. Already in Horace it could mean simply ‘a grown man’, and Latin glossaries give it the sense ‘man’. In Italian, Spanish and Portuguese its relatives stayed ‘bearded’.

dexonline: bărbat · Lewis & Short, barbatus

### nevastă

- then: nevěsta ‘bride’
- now: wife

In old Romanian the nevastă was the bride: a seventeenth-century law book calls a nun ‘the bride of God’, and the Wallachian version writes nevasta. Slavic nevěsta is usually explained as ‘the unknown one’, the stranger who enters the groom’s house. Max Vasmer, in his etymological dictionary of Russian, calls it the best explanation and says the name protected the bride from evil spirits. It is the most accepted explanation, not a proven one.

Vasmer · dexonline: nevastă · Proto-Slavic *nevěsta

### biserică

- then: basilica ‘a public hall in the Roman forum’
- now: church

For the Romans a basilica was a public building in the forum, with double colonnades, used for trials and for trade. When Christians began building large churches they took over the shape of these halls and their name. Ciorănescu lists the same inheritance in a few Romance varieties: Dalmatian, a Lombard dialect and the Romansh of the Engadine. French has basoche, the old name of the guild of court clerks.

dexonline: biserică · Lewis & Short, basilica

### bucată

- then: buccata ‘a mouthful’
- now: a piece

It comes from bucca, ‘puffed cheek, mouth’. Ciorănescu gives its starting sense as ‘the bit put in at one go’, into the mouth. The plural bucate, ‘dishes, food’, keeps it. French bouchée stayed a mouthful.

dexonline: bucată · Lewis & Short, bucca

### a supăra

- then: superare ‘to surpass, to overcome’
- now: to upset, to annoy

Superare means ‘to go over, to surpass, to overcome’. In the chronicler Nicolae Costin it still meant ‘to defeat’: pe unii i-au supărat cu pedeapsă, ‘some they overcame with punishment’. Ciorănescu explains the shift like this: whatever surpasses you is more than you can bear. He compares French excéder, both ‘to exceed’ and ‘to exasperate’.

dexonline: supăra · Lewis & Short, supero

### a plânge

- then: plangere ‘to strike, to beat one’s breast’
- now: to cry

Plangere first means ‘to strike, to beat noisily’. Roman mourners beat their breasts and heads, and the verb came to mean ‘to lament aloud’. The change had already happened in Latin; English plaint and complain share the root. Italian piangere and French plaindre come from the same verb.

dexonline: plânge · Lewis & Short, plango

## The world was light, and the forest was a marsh

The Romanian words for world, earth and forest come from light, floor and marsh. For some of them the dictionaries know where the word came from but not why its meaning changed. Where the dictionaries give no explanation, this page does not invent one.

### lume

- then: lumen ‘light’
- now: the world; people

Romanian lume, ‘world’, and lumină, ‘light’, come from the same Latin lumen, ‘light’. In Italian and Portuguese, lume stayed a lamp or a light. The first sense Ciorănescu gives for the Romanian word is ‘light’.

Why light became world is disputed. The linguist Alexandru Rosetti thought Romanian copied the Slavic model: světŭ means both ‘light’ and ‘world’. Ciorănescu notes that Hungarian világ also has both senses, so the shift can happen on its own.

dexonline: lume · Lewis & Short, lumen

### pământ

- then: pavimentum ‘a beaten floor’
- now: earth, soil; the planet

A pavimentum was a Roman floor of small stones, earth or lime beaten down with a rammer, the source of English pavement. Ciorănescu shows that Romanian comes from a popular form, paumentum. In old Italian and in Sardinian the word stayed ‘floor, paving’. No source explains why, in Romanian, the floor became the whole earth.

dexonline: pământ · Lewis & Short, pavimentum

### pădure

- then: padulem ‘marsh’
- now: forest

It comes from Latin palus, paludem, ‘marsh, swamp’, said popularly as padulem; paludism is an old name for malaria. In Tuscan, Old Sardinian and Old Spanish its relatives stayed ‘marsh’. In Romanian, and probably in Albanian pyll, they came to mean ‘forest’. The dictionaries do not say why.

dexonline: pădure · Lewis & Short, palus

### codru

- then: *quodrum ‘a square, a quarter; a chunk’
- now: a deep old forest

Codru has more proposed origins than almost any other word on this page. DEX and Ciorănescu derive it from Latin quadrum, ‘a square’. DEX goes through a rebuilt form, while Ciorănescu points out that Latin glossaries have the form codra. For Ciorănescu it meant ‘a quarter’, then ‘a piece’, then ‘a piece of land’, then ‘forest’. The old sense survives in un codru de pâine, ‘a hunk of bread’.

Others have taken it for a native pre-Roman word (Miklosich, Hasdeu), a Thracian one (Pascu) or an Albanian one, from kodër, ‘hill’ (Cihac, Meyer, Pușcariu).

dexonline: codru · Lewis & Short, quadrum

### sat

- then: fossatum ‘a ditch; a fortified camp’
- now: village

Nobody knows for sure. DEX derives it from fossatum, ‘ditch’, and the old form fsat, kept in Aromanian and Albanian, seems to support that. Scriban thought of ‘a camp surrounded by a ditch’. Ciorănescu calls the origin ‘doubtful’ and leans towards satum, ‘sown ground’, because in the sixteenth century sat often meant ‘field, ploughland’.

dexonline: sat · Lewis & Short, fossatum

### mâine

- then: mane ‘in the morning’
- now: tomorrow

Mane means ‘morning, early in the morning’, and Romans said cras mane, ‘tomorrow morning’. French demain and Italian domani made the same move, from morning to the next day. No source explains the step in detail.

dexonline: mâine · Lewis & Short, mane

### zăpadă

- then: zapadŭ ‘a fall’
- now: snow

Ciorănescu derives it from Slavic zapadŭ, ‘a fall’. DEX points to the verb zapadati, ‘to fall’. MDA2 explains it differently, as formed within Romanian from a zăpădi. All three go back to the Slavic root for ‘to fall’. The sense ‘snow’ developed only in Romanian. In Bulgarian, zapad came to mean ‘west’, where the sun goes down.

dexonline: zăpadă

### maro

- then: marron ‘a chestnut’
- now: brown

Romanian maro, ‘brown’, is French marron, ‘chestnut’, the large edible kind. The colour carries the fruit’s name, and DEX defines it as ‘the colour of ripe chestnuts’. Romanian also has castaniu, ‘chestnut-coloured’, which says the same with an older word.

dexonline: maro

### încet

- then: quietus ‘quiet, at rest’
- now: slowly; softly

It comes from Latin quietus, ‘quiet, at rest’, in the popular form quetus. Romanian a înceta, ‘to stop’, comes from it too, and so does French coi, ‘silent’. In Romanian, whoever is quiet moves slowly and speaks softly.

dexonline: încet · Lewis & Short, quiesco

## How we know

For each word we read the etymology in the 2009 edition of DEX, the standard Romanian dictionary, and the entry in Alexandru Ciorănescu’s etymological dictionary (DER). Ciorănescu usually discusses the competing explanations and names who proposed them. Where needed we also used the Romanian Academy’s dictionary (MDA2) and Scriban’s dictionary, all on dexonline. Latin meanings are from Lewis and Short, and Slavic ones from Vasmer and the etymological dictionaries cited by Wiktionary.

A few words with well-known stories were left out: a cumpăra, ‘to buy’, because it already meant ‘to buy’ in late Latin, and ban, ‘money’, because its origin is unknown. Bogat, ‘rich’, was left out because its link to the word for ‘god’ belongs to Slavic, not to Romanian.

- dexonline: DEX 2009 and 1998, MDA2, Scriban (1939), Alexandru Ciorănescu, Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române (DER)
- Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (1879), via Perseus
- Liddell, Scott, Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, via Perseus (for a mângâia and a amăgi)
- Max Vasmer, Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language, and R. Derksen, Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, via Wiktionary