astruca

Forms

astruca (third-person singular present astrucă, past participle astrucat) 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *astru(i)cāre, a derivative of astruō (“to build on, add by building”), which is ad- + struō (“to pile up, build”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} Meyer-Lübke and the DA explain the sense “to cover” by the Latin verb taken in the sense of obstruō (“to block up”); the verb survives only in Romanian.^[2][6] Hasdeu linked it to Romance words for a floor, which he traced to a base ⟨*astracu-⟩, and supposed a first sense “to cover with a slab”; those words were later explained from Ancient Greek ὄστρακον (óstrakon, “shell”).^[2] Cihac derived it from Old Church Slavonic съкрꙑти (sŭkryti, “to hide”), which Ciorănescu rejects.^[3][2][7]

The variant ⟨astrunca⟩ took its ⟨n⟩ from arunca “to throw”, and ⟨astrupa⟩ its ⟨p⟩ from astupa “to stop up”.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is Grigore Ureche's chronicle of 1642–1647, in the sense “to bury”.^[2][8] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 has „și ridicară pre Asail și-l astrucară pre el în mormântul tătâne-său în Vithleem” “and they took up Asahel and buried him in his father's tomb in Bethlehem”.^[8][9]

Semantic evolution

Two lines of meaning run through the record.^[6] In Banat, Oltenia and Transylvania the verb means “to cover, to wrap”, and reflexively “to cover oneself to sleep, to lie down”; the Anonymus Caransebesiensis glosses astruc with Latin tego “I cover”.^[6][10][8] The narrower sense “to cover with earth”, to hide something and above all a dead person, gave “to bury”, the sense of the old literary language, of Bukovina and of writers such as Negruzzi and Sadoveanu.^[6][11][1] In Bukovina the reflexive also means “to leap onto a horse”.^[2][12]

Dosoftei has the old subjunctive să astroace beside să astruce.^[8] DEX labels the verb obsolete and regional.^[4]

Timeline

• 1642–1647 – in Grigore Ureche's chronicle, the first record.^[2]
• c. 1650 – astrucătoare “cover” in the Anonymus Caransebesiensis.^[2]
• 1675 – the verbal noun astrucat in Miron Costin.^[2]
• 1682–1686 – in Dosoftei's lives of the saints.^[12]
• 1688 – astrucară “they buried” in the Bucharest Bible.^[9]
• 1887 – astrucuș “roof, cover” in Hasdeu.^[2]
• 1899 – destruca “to uncover”.^[2]
• 1907 – astrucământ “roof” (Banat).^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive, obsolete and regional) To bury a dead person.^[4][1]
2. (transitive and reflexive, obsolete and regional) To cover, to wrap.^[4]
3. (reflexive, regional) To cover oneself up to sleep; to lie down.^[12]
4. (reflexive, Bukovina) To leap onto a horse.^[12][2]

Word family

• astrucat
• astrucământ
• astrucătoare
• astrucuș
• destruca

Related words

• astupa

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. astruca
3. ^ a b 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. astruca
4. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 70
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 748
6. ^ 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. astruca
7. ^ Cihac, A. de (1879), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane II: Éléments slaves, magyars, turcs, grecs-moderne et albanais, Frankfurt am Main, p. 3
8. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. astrucá
9. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. A Împărățiilor a doua 2:31
10. ^ Costinescu, Mariana; Georgescu, Magdalena; Zgraon, Florentina (1987), Dicționarul limbii române literare vechi (1640–1780): termeni regionali, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 1, 59
11. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1, 148
12. ^ 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, 116