aripă

Forms

aripă f (plural aripi)^[1] The oldest texts write arepă: „nește fieri cu arepi și trei capete” “some beasts with wings and three heads”.^[2][3]

Etymology

In most dictionaries it is inherited from Latin alapa (“a slap”), with a sense “something that flaps, a blade” that the Romance forms presuppose: French aube and Occitan aubo “paddle of a water wheel”, Spanish álabe “paddle, vane; eaves” and Portuguese aba “brim; wing of a building”.^{[3][2][4][5][6]} Pușcariu explained the old form ⟨arepă⟩ by a Latin variant with /e/ for unstressed /a/, as in cânepă.^[3] The REW regards the origin and first meaning of the Latin word as unknown.^[6]

Ciorănescu prefers ālipēs (“wing-footed, swift”), first proposed by Densusianu and given by Tiktin, though the REW calls it impossible in meaning; it is formed on āla (“wing”) and pēs (“foot”).^[7][3][1] Other proposals, such as Vulgar Latin *alipa (Pascu, Diculescu), a Hungarian source (Cihac) or Ancient Greek ῥιπή (rhipḗ, “rush, swing”) (Roesler), have found little support.^[7][3]

The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian aripã and Megleno-Romanian iaripă.^[7][8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is arepă in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century.^[3] There it is the bird's wing, as in „who will give me wings (arepi) like a dove” (Psalm 54:6), and the shelter of God's wings (Psalm 16:8, arepiloru).^[10][11] MDA2 dates the word to the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[5]

Semantic evolution

From the wing of a bird or insect the word passed early to protection (sub aripa cuiva “under someone's wing”) and to the fin of a fish.^[4][12][13] Things that stick out at the side or turn in the wind or water are aripi too: the sails of a windmill, the paddles of a mill wheel, the wings of a building, and the flanks of an army, as in Neculce's „numai aripele se hărțuiau” “only the wings skirmished”.^[2][12] Later came the mudguard of a carriage or car, the wing of an aircraft, a winger in team sports and a faction of a party.^[4][3] Aripă zburătoare “flying wing”, a type of aircraft, appears in the press in 1980, after French aile volante.^[14]

In folk belief a baby whose mother ate the wings of a bird would get aripi, convulsions.^[2][5] In the sheepfold aripa oilor is the enclosure where the sheep spend the night.^[5]

Timeline

• early 16th century – arepi, arepile in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[3][10]
• c. 1551–1558 – arepile in the Psaltirea Voronețeană.^[15]
• c. 1573–1578 – in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[5]
• 1652 – the diminutive aripioară.^[3]
• 1686 – aripat “winged” in Dosoftei.^[3]
• 1688 – the verb aripi “to spread the wings” in the Bucharest Bible.^[3]
• 1855 – the verb aripa “to give wings” in Bolintineanu.^[3]
• 1898 – aripăriță “a ewe that keeps to the edge of the flock”.^[3]
• 1980 – aripă zburătoare “flying wing” in the press.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A wing: the organ of flight of birds, some insects and some mammals.^[4][1]
2. (figurative) protection, shelter.^[4][1]
3. (ichthyology) A fin.^[4][1]
4. The membrane on some fruits and seeds that lets the wind carry them.^[4]
5. A part of a machine or object shaped or placed like a wing: the wing of an aircraft, the mudguard of a car, the sail of a windmill.^[4][7][1]
6. The wing of a building, extending to the side of its central part.^[4]
7. The flank of a body of troops; in team sports, a winger.^[4]
8. (figurative) A faction within a party or organization.^[4][1]

Word family

• aripioară
• aripat
• aripos
• aripăriță
• aripa
• înaripa

Related words

• Aromanian aripã
• Latin alapa

Usage notes

Moldavia stresses arípă, the west áripă; the old plural was aripe.^[16][12][5] Common phrases are a prinde aripi “to grow wings, to gain confidence” and a tăia cuiva aripile “to clip someone's wings”.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1913–1949), Dicționarul limbii române (DA), ed. Sextil Pușcariu, tom I (A–B, C, D–De) and tom II (F–I, J–Lojniță), București: Socec / Universul / Monitorul Oficial și Imprimeriile Statului; page scans at cflr-scans.solirom.ro, p. s.v. aripă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. aripă
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 62
5. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 98
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 310
7. ^ 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. aripă
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 141
9. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 120
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 54:6
11. ^ 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 16:10
12. ^ 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. aripă
13. ^ Pisone, Domițian (1865), Dictionariu românescu, latinescu, germanescu și francescu, lucrat după sistemul Lexiconului de Buda, București: Typografia Ioann Weiss, p. 29
14. ^ a b Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. aripă
15. ^ 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 90:4
16. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 122