austru

Forms

austru m (uncountable)^[1] The New Testament of 1648 spells it aostru: „suflând aostru” “as the south wind blew” (Acts 28:13).^[2][3] MDA2 records the variants agostru and aostru, and Hasdeu notes that the word was pronounced in three syllables, sometimes even as aostru.^[4][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin auster (“south wind”), also found as a neuter austrum, a word inherited by several Romance languages.^[5][6][7][1] The Latin word goes back to Proto-Italic *austeros and Proto-Indo-European *h₂éwsteros, from the root *h₂ews- (“dawn”).^[1][8]

It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian austru, which there names a cold east wind.^[9][6] The Romance cognates include Italian ostro and Old French ostre.^[6][7] Pascu derived the Romanian word from Italian austro instead, a view that Ciorănescu reports without following it.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, at Psalm 125:5.^[5][10] In the Codicele Voronețean (about 1563–1583) the word names the south wind in the Acts of the Apostles: „și după o dzi, suflă austru” “and after one day the south wind blew”.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The old texts use the word often, first for the south wind opposed to the north wind crivăț, then for the south itself, as in the Bucharest Bible of 1688, where half a mountain is to move towards the north and half towards the south.^[2][11][5] Hasdeu remarked that in the speech of his time it named the west wind more often than the south wind.^[3] Scriban describes it as a west wind in western Muntenia and a south wind in eastern Muntenia, and a Muntenian glossary records it for the south as a direction.^[12][13] Ciorănescu notes that the literary language seemed to have forgotten the word while it survived in popular speech; today it names the dry south-western wind of southern Romania.^[6][14] The French neologism austral “southern” is a separate loan.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – austru in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[5][10]
• c. 1563–1583 – suflă austru “the south wind blew” in the Codicele Voronețean.^[4][2]
• 1570 – in Coresi's psalter.^[15]
• 1648 – the spelling aostru in the New Testament of 1648.^[2]
• c. 1660–1670 – a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon glosses austru for Slavonic words for the west wind and the south.^[16]
• 1688 – 45 occurrences in the Bucharest Bible.^[17]
• 1825 – the Lexicon of Buda gives both the south and the south wind.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. A dry wind that blows over Romania from the southwest, bringing drought in summer.^[14][19][1]
2. (dated) The south wind, as opposed to the north wind crivăț.^[4][20][2]
3. (dated) The south, the quarter from which this wind blows.^[4][2]
4. (regional) The name of other winds, from the north, north-west or west.^[2][5]

Related words

• Aromanian austru
• Latin auster

Usage notes

DEX 2009 and NODEX treat the word as neuter, DEX 1998 and DLR as masculine; it is stressed either aústru or áustru.^[14][21][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. austru
3. ^ a b c Hasdeu, B. P. (1886–1898), Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae: dicționarul limbei istorice și poporane a românilor, 4 vols. (A–Bărbat), București: Socec, p. s.v. austru
4. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 130
5. ^ a b c d e f 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. austru
6. ^ a b c d e f 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. austru
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 807
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 162
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 125:5
11. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Adamescu, Gh. (1926–1931), Dicționarul enciclopedic ilustrat „Cartea Românească”, București: Cartea Românească, p. s.v. austru
12. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 138
13. ^ Marin, Maria; Mărgărit, Iulia, Glosar dialectal. Muntenia, București: Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”, p. 31
14. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 75
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 77:30
16. ^ 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. austru
17. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Exodus 10:13
18. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 41
19. ^ Academia Republicii Populare Romîne (1958), Dicționarul limbii romîne moderne, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1, 54
20. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. aústru
21. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan” (1998), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române, 2nd ed., București: Univers Enciclopedic, p. 71