When «rost» meant mouth — 19 words from the Scheian Psalter

Manuscript

ms. 449 Romanian Academy Library

Scripts

3 hands of copyists, not translators

Editions

1889 · 1916 Bianu · Candrea

The Scheian Psalter is one of the oldest witnesses that the Psalter was read in Romanian. Manuscript 449 of the Romanian Academy Library holds a translation from Slavonic, copied by three scribal hands — three distinct scripts laid over the same text.

Bianu edited it in 1889: volume I, the text, facsimile and transcription, with the variants from Coresi (1577) gathered in the apparatus. The title page, reproduced below, states the programme on its own: first the manuscript as it looks, then its lettering as it reads.

In the preface, Bianu shows his reckoning. The Romanian text predates everything known until then — the Slavo-Romanian Psalter printed by Deacon Coresi in 1577 —, and he dates the copying «la anul 1482 saŭ la 1485» (in the year 1482 or 1485):

Candrea re-edited it comparatively in 1916, alongside the other old psalters. His pagination is the ruler for every card here: each «p.» points at the 1916 edition.

The question is plain: what did the words mean then, and what do they mean now? 19 cards answer — 12 words followed from end to end, plus 7 short cards —, each with its attestation badge. Where the search returned nothing, the zero stands on the page as a finding, not a gap.

Each card answers in the same order: the manuscript form, the then-meaning, the now-meaning, the etymon and the evidence — the Candrea page where the form occurs. The badge says at a glance how solid the attestation is:

• Attested Form and sense attested in the Scheian; the Candrea page sits at the card.
• Inflected forms Only inflected forms attested, not the headword form.
• Family Derivatives or kin of the word attested, not the word itself.
• Not found The search returned nothing in the Scheian; the absence is recorded as such.

«With no modern heir», under the now-meaning, means the old word has nothing to show today: it left use, or its sense was lost. Each card links to DEX, so you can check for yourself.

Some forms need a reading key:

Chiar comes from CLARUS and meant «clear». The loveliest evidence sits with Coresi, not in the psalms: eggs «mai chiar» — clearer and brighter, in Densușianu's gloss. In the Scheian, the psalm search returned zero; the word occurs only in the preface, so the card wears the «Not found» badge, and the road from «clear» to today's precision adverb stays undocumented here. The old adjective still shows in two places: «din chiar senin» — out of the clear blue sky — and «apă chioară», where the form decayed after the sense was lost. Meanwhile the adjective yielded the ground to «limpede» and survived only as an adverb.

With răposa, the replacement was caught in the act. In the 16th century, «a răposa» meant «to rest», and Coresi writes in his Homiliary: «dă lor răpaos și odihnă» — the old word beside its new gloss, as if the printer doubted the reader would still understand it. He was right to worry: Slavonic «a se odihni» won, and today's «răposa», meaning «to die», is a neologism dressed in the old word's formal clothes. In the psalms the form was never found: formal continuity, with no continuity of sense.

And lume is the mixed case: MUNDUS, attested on pp. 60, 328 and 500, beside a rare use as LUMEN — «light» —, calqued on Slavonic světъ, which meant both. The Scheian itself preserves the scene:

«Ferește-mă, Doamne, ca lumea ochiului»

«Light» never caught on; mankind remained.

Cumplit is attested meaning «fulfilled» (pp. 276, 124, 64), and Densușianu reconstructs its road step by step: «Zilele se cumplu» — the days are fulfilled; «a cumplit drumul» — to carry a road through to its end. Today's dread would have passed through «om cumplit de rău» — a man perfected in evil, to the last margin of wickedness —, where «cumplit» intensified, like an intensifier. At some point the companion vanished, and the intensifier stood alone with the nuance they had carried together. A hypothesis, marked as such at the card.

Greață — «weight, heaviness» become «disgust» — was never found in the Scheian; the only old witness is Voroneț:

«Urma frîngea-se de greața valurilor»

The sense then narrowed to «something that presses, something that sickens». The shift looks natural, yet here it cannot be proven.

Rost meant «mouth» — ROSTRUM, which in Latin first meant «beak», from RODERE, «to gnaw», and was said of animals. Coresi uses it as an everyday word:

«Deschide-voi rostul meu și se va auzi»

In the Scheian stand the inflected forms (pp. 40, 53, 93). Then «gură» — from GULA, «gullet» — won the race, and «rost» withdrew into the phrase «pe de rost» (by heart): a contamination of «de rost» (from the mouth) with «pre rost» (through the mouth). And the road does not end there: at the weaving loom, «rost» is the empty gap between heddles — «a pune rostul pînzei» —, whence «nu e cu rost», properly made, and today's purpose. From beak to purpose in four stops: the chart at the top of the page shows them all.

Cîștiga is the slipperiest case: from «to care for» (CASTIGARE) to «to obtain», with no attestation in the psalms to show the crossing. Densușianu proposes the bridge: «cîștig pruncii» — not «I punish the children», as the Academy Dictionary would have it («a forced reading»), but «I see to the raising of the children». From tending to gaining, the step was taken outside the manuscript. The facsimile of the paragraph sits in the duels chapter, beside «ciudesă».

Codru meant «mountain» (QUADRUM), on pp. 88, 574, 866, 473 and 983. Densușianu climbs higher still: vulgar QUODRUM could at first only have meant «lowland forest» — only a forest standing on flat ground could look like something square. Later «un codru» was also said of high-altitude forest, and by the 16th century the sense had become identical with «mountain». Today's forest is, most likely, the forest on the ridge: the sense slid off the peak onto what covers it.

Mutare meant «settlement, village, dwelling» (pp. 124, 883), with the pastoral sense of «sheepfold». The verse shows it in festive dress:

«În soare puse mutarea sa»

And in the dialects the old sense still sounds: around Rodna a «mutare» is a small sheepfold that can be moved with ease, while Maramureș and the Apuseni Mountains have «mutătoare» and «mutătură». The village-sheepfold of transhumance stayed behind; the word keeps only the movement today.

Fără-fund — hell, the abyss — is attested (pp. 497, 734); beznă, darkness, never occurs in the manuscript. Slavonic bezdeno, «without bottom», circulates in Coresi in a form deemed artificial: hell is in the manuscript, darkness is not. Densușianu traces «beznă» through the century's religious texts, where it occurs often — but the Scheian would not take it.

Not every disappearance is an accident. Some words lost because someone else won: the same idea, two coats, only one survives. Two duels and a few survivors tell the story of competition in the vocabulary — plus one precious Latinism that never fitted among the cards.

Yet «bezaconie» never quite died: the downtrodden Romanian saying «a venit și bezaconia aceasta, împilarea aceasta» (here comes this bezaconie too, this oppression) gave it the sense of «an unexpected, startling thing» — today's bazaconie.

Meser lost to no single rival: it lost an entire world. «Poor» (MISER — the same root as Western misericordia), with «meserătate» = poverty, «a meseri» = to grow poor, and «mesereze» = mercy — the last a crystallized Latin verb (MISERERE, «have mercy»), turned noun like «durere». At 96 occurrences it is the most frequent lost word on the list — and it looks strikingly like «meșter» (master craftsman), which has nothing to do with it. And the trace of «meser» may well have survived inside «meserie» (profession): Scriban and DLRM see it derived from «meser» (poor), while Tiktin builds it on «meserere» — mercy, but also «office», since offices were given by the prince, who showed mercy to the dignitary. The sense would have come from It. mestiere and Fr. métier, in an explanation adopted by CADE and DLR; the DER's author leans toward the first explanation, «but it needs some clarification», while DU drily writes «origin unknown».

Cerca, by contrast, shows what it means to hold out five centuries: «to seek» it was, and «to seek» it stayed — from CIRCARE, «to walk around a plot to measure it», the surveyors' phrase that, with time, crossed over into «passing through in order to seek, to pursue something». Inremă (42 tokens) is the rhotacism yardstick; arina (p. 512) was abandoned by the literary language but lives on regionally; celariu (p. 527), the monastic cellarer, never crossed the walls.