rosée

Forms

rosée f (plural rosées)^[1] Old French rusee, rosede, rosee and rousee.^[2][3][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French rosee, inherited from Vulgar Latin *rōsāta (“dew”), derived from rōs (“dew”).^{[2][4][3][5][1]} Rey links the Latin noun with Lithuanian rasà and with Vedic and Old Church Slavonic words, and calls a link with the Greek word for dew (see drosera) possible but uncertain;^[3][1] Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Indo-European *h₁rṓs.^[3][1]

Cognate with Old Occitan rozada, Catalan rosada and Italian rugiada, which came from the Old Occitan word.^[5][6] The southern dialects also use derivatives of Occitan aiga (“water”), as in aiguail.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It appears as rusee in the Chanson de Roland (about 1100), of a land where neither rain nor dew falls.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

Rosée kept the Latin sense and took in French an unexpected figurative value, “sweetness” (late 12th century), perhaps influenced by rose.^[3][2] It named very tender food (1690), a sense now gone, and entered the comparison tendre comme la rosée (before 1515).^[3][2]

In veterinary language it named the fluid oozing from a horse's sole when the hoof is pared too close (1762), and in physics point de rosée is the temperature at which water vapour condenses (1832 in the DHLF, 1931 in the TLFi).^[3][2]

Timeline

• c. 1100 – Rusee appears in the Chanson de Roland.^[2]
• first half of the 12th century – The form rosede in the Oxford Psalter.^[2]
• c. 1165 – The form rosee in Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie.^[2]
• late 12th century – Rousee means “sweetness” in Raoul de Cambrai.^[2]
• 1498–1515 – Tendre comme rosée is used of a child by Pierre Gringore.^[2]
• 1690 – Furetière records tendre comme rosée of meat.^[2]
• 1762 – The veterinary sense is recorded.^[3]
• 1832 – Point de rosée is recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. dew: fine droplets of water condensed from the air, settling on plants and objects in the morning and evening.^[7][2][1]
2. (physics) Point de rosée: the dew point.^[7][2]
3. Tendre comme la rosée: very tender, of meat or vegetables.^[7][6]

Word family

• rosoyer
• rosage

Related words

• arroser
• romarin
• rossolis
• Latin rōs

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 10, 473b
5. ^ a b c Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
6. ^ a b c Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
7. ^ a b c Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert