ploure

Forms

ploure (first-person singular present ploc, first-person singular preterite ploguí, past participle plogut); root stress: (Northern) /o̞/, (Balearic, Central, Northwestern, Valencia) /ɔ/^[1] The verb keeps the initial cluster /pl/ throughout the language area, from the Balearic Islands and Alicante to Roussillon and Ribagorça.^[2] The reflexive ploure's, said of a roof or a room where the rain comes in, is used in several dialect areas but not in Central Catalan.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin plovere, the Vulgar Latin verb that replaced classical pluō (“to rain”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The form with /v/ is recorded in Petronius and already in archaic Latin, though its explanation is uncertain.^[6]

The same Vulgar Latin verb is Italian piovere, French pleuvoir, Occitan plòure, Spanish llover, Portuguese chover and Romanian ploua.^[7][8]

The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Italic *plow-e/o-, and de Vaan connects it with *pleu- (“to swim, float”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is in the first literary texts of the 13th century.^[2] The Vides de sants rosselloneses tell that in the time of an emperor Henry it rained (ploc) and thundered as never since Noah, and in the Llibre dels fets James I recalls that those coming to him from Tortosa were caught by heavy rain (venc-los gran pluja; e ploc tant).^[2] In Llull's Llibre de contemplació it is the rain of nature that God's power alone can hold back.^[10][11]

Semantic evolution

From the start the verb was impersonal, with the sense of water falling from the clouds;^[11][10] Llull also uses it of what comes down from the sky, and a medieval text says that the Lord rained manna on the children of Israel in the desert.^[11][10] Sant Vicent Ferrer has a body that “rained blood”, the use for anything that falls like rain.^[10]

Fabra's dictionary of 1932 gives the figurative sense of things arriving in great numbers (bullets, misfortunes, recommendations), with set phrases such as ploure a bots i barrals and ploure sobre mullat.^[12] Diminutive verbs for light rain are old: ploviscar is recorded in 1696, plovisquejar in 1803, and entreploure in 1752.^[4] Coromines adds that eastern Catalan uses plovinejar and that the Valencian ploguda means a spell of rainy days.^[2]

Timeline

• 13th century – the verb in Llull, the chronicle of James I and the Vides de sants rosselloneses.^[2]
• 1272 – Llull's Llibre de contemplació asks who forbids nature to rain but God's power.^[10]
• Second half of the 13th century – first record in the CICA corpus, in Desclot's chronicle.^[13]
• 1435 – the reflexive ploure's, of an arch at risk of letting the rain in.^[2]
• 1696 – ploviscar “to drizzle”.^[4]
• 1932 – Fabra's dictionary gives the literal and the figurative senses.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. (impersonal) To rain: Diuen que demà plourà tota la tarda.^[14][5][1]
2. ploure a bots i barrals: to pour down, rain very hard.^[14]
3. ploure sobre mullat: of a misfortune or setback, to come on top of another.^[14]
4. (figurative) To fall or arrive in great quantity: Li plovien les queixes per tot arreu.^[14][5]
5. ara plouen figues: said of something that cannot happen.^[14]
6. (reflexive, dialectal) Of a roof or a room, to leak, let the rain in.^[2]

Word family

• entreploure
• ploguda
• plovisquejar
• ploviscar
• plovinejar
• plovisc

Related words

• pluja
• pluig
• Latin pluō
• Occitan plòure
• Spanish llover

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 6, 622
3. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll, p. s.v. ploure
4. ^ a b c Bruguera, Jordi (1996), Diccionari etimològic, Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, p. 723
5. ^ a b c Enciclopèdia Catalana, Gran diccionari de la llengua catalana (GDLC), Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana; online edition, https://www.diccionari.cat, p. s.v. ploure
6. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 733
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6610
8. ^ Alibert, Louis (1966), Dictionnaire occitan-français selon les parlers languedociens, Toulouse: Institut d'Études Occitanes, p. s.v. plòure
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c d e Faraudo de Saint-Germain, Lluís, Vocabulari de la llengua catalana medieval, online edition, Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, p. s.v. ploure
11. ^ a b c Nou glossari general lul·lià (NGGL), Centre de Documentació Ramon Llull, Universitat de Barcelona, https://nggl.ub.edu, p. s.v. ploure
12. ^ a b Fabra, Pompeu (1932), Diccionari general de la llengua catalana, Barcelona: Llibreria Catalònia, p. s.v. ploure
13. ^ Torruella, Joan; Pérez Saldanya, Manuel; Martines, Josep (dirs.), Corpus Informatitzat del Català Antic (CICA), https://www.cica.cat, p. s.v. ploure
14. ^ a b c d e Institut d'Estudis Catalans (2007), Diccionari de la llengua catalana, 2nd ed. (DIEC2), Barcelona: Edicions 62; online edition with later updates, https://dlc.iec.cat, p. s.v. ploure