dibui

Where it comes from

Sometimes treated as southern variant of găbui ("to grab, seize") and connected to several competing etymologies, including Ruthenian dybaty and a possible connection with Coordinate term: *gabati. Proto-Slavic *gabati is reconstructed with the meaning “to seize; to catch” and has descendants including Bulgarian габам (gabam), Ukrainian габати (habaty), Belarusian габаць (habacʹ), Czech habati, and Slovak habať. Derksen reconstructs Proto-Slavic *gabati and derives it from Proto-Indo-European *gʰeh₁bʰ-.

Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române (DELR) derives dibui (and the variants adibí, adibuí, dibăí, diboí) from Proto-Slavic *dybati / Proto-Slavic *děbnǫti “to sneak, to walk on tiptoe”, comparing dialectal Russian dybati (“to totter, to walk slowly and clumsily”), Ukrainian dybaty (“to joggle, to move in an abnormal manner”), Polish dybać (“to lurk, to lie in wait”), and (most significantly) Bulgarian дебя (debja) (“to hunt upon stealthily, to sneak, to insinuate ”), дебна (debna, “to stalk, to lie in wait, to be on the lookout for something, to be on the prowl, to shadow”); it also notes the possible relationship with găbui and ghibui, but considers the identification of dibui as a variant of găbui semantically unlikely.