andrea

Forms

andrea f (plural andrele)^[1] The Bucharest Bible (1688) has undrea: „Vei lua undreaoa şi vei găuri ureachea lui” “you shall take the awl and pierce his ear”.^[2][3] Undrea is the form of Muntenia and Transylvania, andrea that of Moldavia, Oltenia and Banat;^[4][5] indrea and îndrea are rarer.^[4][5] DELR also records the regional andreauă and undreauă, remade from the articled singular according to DLR.^[3][2]

Etymology

Its origin is unknown, as DEX, Tiktin and DLR say.^[6][4][2] DELR names as probable Giuglea's Latin *endrella, from ἔνδρυον (éndruon, “oaken peg”), the pin that fixes the yoke to the pole.^[3][7] Ciorănescu does not think this possible.^[8] Others thought of a substrate word: Reichenkron compared *ardh- (“rod, pole”), Poghirc *andʰer- (“spike, rod”), and Russu reconstructed a Thracian base for the form undrea.^[3] Wiktionary mentions the substrate view too.^[1] Older proposals are Hasdeu's Old High German nādala (“needle”), a Turkish source proposed by Cihac and Laurian and Massim's Latin intrō (“to enter”).^[3]

Scriban, and with hesitation Ciorănescu and Wiktionary, connect it with the name of Saint Andrew, Andrei, whose feast at the start of winter gave the old name of December.^[5][8][1] Scriban explains it by the knitting of socks at that time of the year, Tiktin by the likeness to the arms of Saint Andrew's cross, which Ciorănescu finds unconvincing.^[5][8] The Aromanian forms are andreauă and undreauă.^[3][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the word to 1630; the needle sense is in the Bucharest Bible of 1688, where undreaoa is the awl used to pierce a slave's ear.^[4][2][3] The Slavonic–Romanian lexicons from about 1660 have undrea.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Hasdeu derived all the senses from that of a needle.^[10] DLR's first sense is a long, thin tool of iron, steel or wood, pointed at one end, used to pierce leather, and a thick needle for sewing sacks and mattresses; the knitting needle is the main modern sense.^[2][6] In the trades it named a crossbeam: the beam carrying the floor of a mill, and the iron bar joining the ploughshare to the beam of the plough.^[4][11][12] In folk anatomy andreaua gâtului was the collarbone and andrelele the veins of the neck; a recipe book Tiktin quotes uses în andrele for vegetables cut into strips.^[4][12]

Timeline

• 1630 – the first record of the common noun.^[4]
• 1660 – undrea in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[9]
• 1688 – undreaoa “the awl” in the Bucharest Bible.^[3][2]
• 1870 – andrea and undrea “knitting needle” in Costinescu.^[13]
• 1885 – undrelar “box for sewing tools”.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A knitting needle: A împletit fularul cu patru andrele. “She knitted the scarf with four needles.”^[6][14]
2. A large needle for sewing sacks, mattresses and the like.^[6][14]
3. (regional) A crossbeam: the beam that carries the floor of a mill; the iron bar joining the share to the beam of a plough.^[12][4]
4. (regional, folk anatomy) The collarbone; in the plural, the veins of the neck.^[12][4]

Related words

• undrea
• îndrea

Usage notes

Tiktin treats Andrea (also Îndrea, Undrea) “December”, the month named after Saint Andrew, as a separate word, recorded from 1591.^[4] The Maramureș dictionaries record it as andrea, indrea or îndrelușă.^[15] The plural is andrele, the articled singular andreaua.^[6][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. undrea
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. andrea
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. andrea
5. ^ a b c d Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 101
6. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 41
7. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. ἔνδρυον
8. ^ a b c d 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. undrea
9. ^ a b Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. undrea
10. ^ Hasdeu, B. P. (1886–1898), Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae: dicționarul limbei istorice și poporane a românilor, 4 vols. (A–Bărbat), București: Socec, p. s.v. andrea
11. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 24
12. ^ a b c d Candrea, I.-A.; Adamescu, Gh. (1926–1931), Dicționarul enciclopedic ilustrat „Cartea Românească”, București: Cartea Românească, p. s.v. andrea
13. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 1, 42
14. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 63
15. ^ Ștef, Dorin (2021), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din județul Maramureș, 3rd ed., Baia Mare, p. s.v. andrea
16. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. andrea