roter

Forms

roter^[1] Old French ruter (about 1120), rutter and roter (about 1130), and router (1256).^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French ruter, inherited from Late Latin ruptō, an alteration of Latin ructō (“to belch”), derived from ructus (“belch”).^[4][2][3][5] The Late Latin form is explained by the influence of ruptus, the past participle of rumpō (“to break”).^[2][6] The Old French forms had /u/, as in router;^[6][7] Bloch and Wartburg see the later ⟨o⟩ as a more expressive vowel, while the REW notes that the French and Occitan forms seem to require the Late Latin form and that the French /o/ remains odd.^[6][7] The Latin verb also survives in the learned éructer.^[2]

Cognate with Italian ruttare, Old Occitan rotar, Catalan rotar and Portuguese arrotar.^[7][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are figurative: in the Cambridge Psalter (about 1120) ruter renders Latin eructare in the sense “to utter (words)”, and about 1130 roter means “to breathe out (one's soul)”, as in Wace's faire roter l'anme “to kill” (1155).^[2][3][4] Rey takes these uses to presuppose the plain sense “to belch”, which is recorded from about 1130.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The figurative Old French senses died out, and the verb kept the bodily sense, which Littré already marked as a low word to be avoided.^[4][8] In riding-school language a horse that was roter sur l'avoine was a jaded or lazy one.^[8]

In 19th-century army slang en roter meant “to be astonished” (1881); by 1895 it meant “to slog away, to have a hard time”, the sense that Dorgelès used in 1919 and that survives today, a metaphor like en baver.^[4][2] Derivatives include roteur “one who belches” and the slang roteuse for a bottle of champagne.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1120 – Ruter “to utter” appears in the Cambridge Psalter.^[2][3]
• c. 1130 – Roter is used for breathing out the soul, and rutter for belching.^[3][2]
• 1155 – Wace writes faire roter l'anme “to kill”.^[4]
• 1256 – Aldebrandin of Siena's Régime du corps has router “to belch”.^[4][3]
• c. 1380 – The spelling roter appears in the Latin–French glossary Aalma.^[3][9]
• 1881 – Army slang en roter “to be astonished”.^[4]
• 1895 – En roter “to slog, to suffer”.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, familiar or vulgar) To belch, to burp: il a roté bruyamment après le repas.^[5][4]
2. En roter (familiar): to have a hard time, to slog through something painful.^[5][4]
3. (transitive, figurative) To spit out (words) violently.^[4]

Related words

• rot
• éructer
• Latin ructō

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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
5. ^ a b c Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ a b c d Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
7. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7416
8. ^ a b Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert