îmbuca

Forms

îmbuca (third-person singular present îmbucă, past participle îmbucat), first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *imbuccō (“to put into the mouth”), from bucca (“cheek; mouth”).^{[2][3][4][5][6][1]} The Latin word meant “cheek” and, in colloquial speech, “mouth”.^[7] The verb survives south of the Danube as Aromanian mbuc.^[3][2][8] Its Romance cognates are Italian imboccare, French emboucher, Spanish embocar and Portuguese embocar.^[3][2][9]

Ciorănescu finds a derivative of bucă inside Romanian less likely, because all the verb's senses go back to Latin “mouth”, while the Romanian noun means only “cheek”.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the first record to about 1500, in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, where the imperative îmbucați stands at Psalm 33:8.^[2][10] Tiktin's first record is Coresi's Praxiu of 1563, and MDA2's is Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică (1704).^[6][4]

Semantic evolution

The main sense is to put food into the mouth: to eat in haste, to gulp down.^[2][5] In Brașov it also meant to chew food before giving it to a small child.^[2] From the mouth the verb passed to things fitted one into another: two pieces joined by their ends, and, of wounds, to close up.^[2][5] Ciorănescu also records the old senses “to despise” and “to kiss, embrace”, and Șăineanu has “to kiss” as a familiar use.^[3][11]

The derivative îmbucătură “mouthful” is recorded from 1613; it later took the sense “mouth of a river” after French embouchure.^[2] Other derivatives are îmbucător “who gulps” (1691–1697), îmbucături “to feed bit by bit” (1825) and the Moldavian îmbucări “to feed cattle” (1888).^[2] In Maramureș the verb means to taste food, or to gobble it.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – îmbucați in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[2][10]
• 1563 – in Coresi's Praxiu.^[6]
• 1613 – îmbucătură “mouthful”.^[2]
• 1691-1697 – îmbucător in Corbea's dictionary.^[2]
• 1704 – in Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică.^[4]
• 1825 – îmbucături and îmbucăturuță in the Lexicon de la Buda.^[2]
• 1888 – Moldavian îmbucări “to feed cattle”.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To eat in a hurry, whatever is at hand; to gulp down at once: A îmbucat ceva și a plecat la câmp.^[5][3][1]
2. To taste, to have a bite.^[3][4][12]
3. To take the mouthpiece of a wind instrument into the mouth.^[13]
4. (reflexive, of technical parts) To fit by one end into another piece, to interlock.^[5][1]

Word family

• îmbucătură
• îmbucător
• îmbucări

Related words

• bucată
• Aromanian mbuc
• Latin bucca

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2011–), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române (DELR), vol. I: A–B (2011), vol. II: C (2015–2018), București: Editura Academiei Române; continued online at delr.lingv.ro, p. s.v. îmbuca
3. ^ a b c d e f g Ciorănescu, Alexandru (1958–1966), Diccionario etimológico rumano, La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna (Romanian ed.: Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române, București: Saeculum, 2001), p. s.v. îmbuca
4. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1184
5. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 531
6. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. îmbuca
7. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net)
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4285
10. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 33:8
11. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 306
12. ^ a b Ștef, Dorin (2011), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din Maramureș, Baia Mare: Ethnologica, p. s.v. îmbuca
13. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. îmbuca