September 16, 2005
Romanian Etymology Friday
Today's Romanian word is sat, "village".
Sat is one of those Romanian words that comes from Latin, but in a non-obvious way. There are a lot of these. For instance, the word for "earth"? Both in the sense of "the dirt, the ground" and "the planet"? It's piment. (Romanian diacritical marks not included. The actual pronunciation is something like "pummunt".)
That comes from the Latin pavimentum, which is exactly what it sounds like: stones, pavement. Why the medieval Romanians chose this instead of the perfectly good Latin word terra, I don't know. (Unless it's because they were busy turning terra into tara, which is the Romanian for "field, land, country".)
But I digress. Sat is interesting because it comes from the Latin fossatum. That's the gerund form of the verb fossare, "to dig". Fossare survives in English in the scientific term "fossorial" -- meaning digging animals, like moles -- and the word "fossil", a 19th century neologism meaning "that which is dug".
Anyway, in Latin, fossatum literally means "(the) digging". It was commonly used as a military term -- you'll find it in Caesar's Gallic Wars, for instance, applied to defensive trenches, ditches and moats.
The best guess -- and this is just a guess -- is that back in the Dark Ages, Romanian settlements were surrounded by just these sorts of defensive trenches. To the point that the Romanians started referring to settlements as "diggings".
Totally random note: when J.R.R. Tolkein designed an artificial language for his hobbits, he did much the same thing; there are hobbit towns called "delvings". Although in that case, it was because hobbits liked digging, not because they were living in terror of barbarian war bands sweeping down from the steppes and burning them all alive.
This has been a Romanian Etymology Friday. Thank you.
Posted by douglas at September 16, 2005 12:24 PMJust a small correction - the Romanian word for Earth is not "piment" but "pămānt" (or pamant, without diacritics).
Posted by: Mihai at September 16, 2005 01:05 PMAnother word with an interesting etymology is "Lume" (world), which comes from Latin "Lumen" (light).
And here's a question for the readers: what could be the etymology and the story behind the Romanian verb "dezmierda" (to caress) ?
Posted by: Bogdan at September 16, 2005 01:13 PMIncidentally, the Arabic name of the original site of Cairo, al-Fustat, also comes from fossatum.
Posted by: Carlos at September 16, 2005 02:00 PMI found another strange derivation: "cătuşă" (handcuffs) is apparently derived from Latin "catta" (cat), with diminutive "-uşă".
Posted by: Bogdan at September 16, 2005 04:37 PMiirc "terra" was primarily land as opposed to water. Soil was "humus".
An English cognate to the root is "thirst". The root refers primarily to dryness.
Dezmierda is from latin dismerdare.
You can check that on dexonline.ro
Posted by: zbr at September 16, 2005 11:37 PMzbr, yes, that's true, but I wanted to see if anyone knows the story behind the word. :-)
Posted by: Bogdan at September 16, 2005 11:49 PMI had a hunch, and it seems to be confirmed by an Italian linguist posting on Usenet: "rumeno DEZ- ad es. in // d e z m i e r d a 'accarezzare, pulire il sederino di un bimbo
So the word used for cleaning a baby's bodily functions -- I suppose the English equivalent would be 'to deshit', or more Germanically, 'to unshit' -- was transferred to the equally intimate action of the caress.
Most of the English words with similar origins have been cleansed from the language. Tell someone that the dandelion used to be called the pissabed (it was used as a diuretic) and you'll get a very odd look.
Posted by: Carlos at September 17, 2005 01:17 PMHm, some of the first paragraph got cut off because of the symbols used. But it continued: [left arrow] *DISMERDARE, with assorted punctuation to close off clauses and quotes.
It's an interesting word.
Posted by: Carlos at September 17, 2005 01:25 PMDandelion ("păpădie") also has in Romanian the name "băşina porcului" ("Pig's fart"). :-)
...but I have no idea why.
Should I start with the remarks from the end or ...
Anyway ... pig's fart (basina porcului), my dear Bogdan ... is a mushroom. It has nothing in common with papadia (which is a plant)!! My advice to you (even if I'm pretty sure you don't need it/want it!)... spend more time in the country side ... among the peasants! Books can teach you alot, but never what's life!
Now back to the beginning ... Wow! Romanian is a romance language! Geezzz! Whatta big surprise! Its history is longer then 4 years! Their ancestors were legionares! And Dacians! Barbarians! Cool! Wow! Their language is related to Italian! That's cool too! ... Alot of words are coming from latin ... Wait a minute! The legionares were Romans(all of them!)! ... Unbelievable!
Come on people!!! This is realy ridiculous! Do you think somebody cares about this?! ... Did you ... 2 or 3 years ago?!
P.S. I hope you'll escuse my sarcasm ... The blog is great ... for some people ... for others is just funny ... for others is scary ... for others is ...
... and I'm still living in Florida ... and I've enjoyed your blog :) Sometimes :)
... and I'm still a Romanian ...
To Victor: Băşina porcului is, at least in Southern Romania, a name for dandelion/păpădie. Maybe in some other regions, it may refer to a mushroom, but I am absolutely certain that here it refers to this plant.
Also, Victor, this blog post was about an unusual etymologies. There may be some thousands of words of Latin origin and most of them have the same meaning as in Latin or other Romance languages, but only about two dozen have changed meanings and that makes them interesting.
dezmierda:
it was usually tried to be derived from Latin with the semantic development as explained before ( mother shows an act of love un-shiting the child and from this aspect, the word developed along).
In my opinion this is just pure romantism of an old time where one tried to make everything Latin.
Presumabely the word is a derivativ of "miere" (honey) and it should have meant "to give you something like honey" which in fact the meaning of the word is.
i want to know a coined word of romanian language in the 21st century
i want to know a coined word of romanian language in the 21st century
Hello, I would like to know the origin of the romanian word "adevăr" (truth). Has it anything to do with Latin "veritas"?
Thank you.
Posted by: Victor Quero at May 29, 2006 09:41 PMIt's related. According to this website:
http://soltdm.tripod.com/limbimod/romana/etimroma.htm
the word comes from Latin ad+de+verum.
Posted by: Carlos at May 30, 2006 05:33 PM