>Also it seems to be more popular on a Google search:
>ucide: 8,160 results / "a ucide": 1,400
>omori: 5,080 results / "a omorî": 356
>
>at "omorî", both versions (with diacriticals and without) were added
Noteworthy:
(1) the inherited and widely used by all social strata among
Romanian native speakers (I mean the so-called Daco-Roamanian
dialect, of course) are the verb <a omorî> "to kill" and the noun
<omor> "killing;"
(2) in the judicial language (e.g. in the Criminal Code) the term
is <omor> (e.g. <omor, omor calificat, omor deosebit de grav, omor
din culpa>), and not <ucidere> (although there is <pruncucidere>).
Usually, non-professionals tend to translate Engl. <manslaughter>
and <homicide> as Rum. <omucidere;> yet this is rather colloquial,
and no Rum. Criminal Code term.
Conclusion: <omor> (+ suffixes), whether a Slavic loanie or not,
continues to be primus inter pares among its Romanian synonyma.
(Only in specialized terms can't it replace <ucidere>, e.g. <prunc-
ucidere>, <fratricid>, <suicid> and <uciga$> "killer; assassin" & al.)
However, in idiomatic phrases like this, <Uciga-l toaca> (a euphemistic
locution for the devil), there's no way for replacing the verb with
<a omorî> => <*Omoare-l toaca>. [Here, both verbs are in the...
subjunctive.] [Another aspect: indicative present 3rd person <moare>
"he/she/it dies or is dying", subjunctive <sa moara>; in contrast, in
<a omori> "to kill" the suffixes are... vice-versa: (1) <omoara>, (2)
<sa omoare>. This for those among you who might be interested in
such details, in order to see how the... anonymous native speaker
"authors" opted for some forms/variants or other, thus creating...
harmony among elements having different etymologies. :]]
>Just wondering. What is the link between "Omorît" (killed) and "mort"
>(dead man) ? Their pronounciation is quite similar.
Well, it seems to be quite transparent: that part <-M[vowel]R->
that means "death/dead/to die"... (I expect Pokorny's list to
include the appropriate PIE *(word).)
[Here, it is interesting to see the past participles of these
verbs -- both treated according to the Latin pattern of the IVth
conjugation, namely a omorî -> omorîre, and a muri -> murire.
The former has a participle that I'd call a... regular one, <omorît>,
the latter has two variants: <murit> "died," and <mort>, which is
used as an adjective, and means "dead".] [So, one sees that in the
Romance variant the root vowel varies [o<->u], whereas in the
one influenced by some Slavic idiom there's no [u] whatsoever and
in no Daco-Romanian subdialect. This in spite of the fact that
Romanian easily tends to such [o<->u] occurrences. A parallel can
be seen in another semantic environment, e.g. when pickles are
<muratzi>, and any such vegetable preserved in such a sour and
salty liquid is called <muratura> [mu-r&'tu-r&], yet the liquid
itself is called <moare> (cf. Lat. <muria>), and is almost identic
with the adapted neologism used in medicine <umoare> <= <humor>.]
George