bârfă

Forms

bârfă f (plural bârfe)^[1]

Etymology

It is a back-formation from Romanian bârfi (“to gossip, to speak ill of”), the noun being made by dropping the verb's ending.^[2][1][3] The verb itself has no agreed source: DEX calls it of unknown origin, and Ciorănescu, after Iordan, takes it as an expressive creation built on the sound cluster heard in boarfe “rags” and molfăi “to mumble”.^[2][4] Tiktin compared a Church Slavonic verb for “to bark” and German belfern (“to yelp”), and Crețu's derivation from Latin fābulor (“to talk”) through a metathesis is mentioned by Ciorănescu only as a curiosity.^[5][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 gives no date for the noun: its first record is a citation of Iordan in the manuscript files of the Academy dictionary.^[3] The verb it comes from is much older, first in Vasile Lupu's Moldavian law code of 1646, in a passage on a man who, answering another's abuse, says that he bârfește “slanders”.^[3][6]

Semantic evolution

The noun took over only the modern sense of the verb.^[2][6] In old texts bârfi meant “to talk nonsense, to babble”, while “to speak ill of someone, to slander” is the sense the DA calls the current one.^[6][5] Bârfă is labelled colloquial, a synonym of the older abstract noun bârfeală.^[2][3][7]

In slang the word is also used for a prostitute.^[8]

Timeline

• 1646 – the verb bârfi in Vasile Lupu's law code.^[3][6]
• 1649 – bârfi in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[5]
• 1980 – bârfă “gossip” in Breban's dictionary of the contemporary language.^[7]
• 1998 – bârfă in DEX as a colloquial synonym of bârfeală.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. (colloquial) gossip, backbiting: talk that speaks ill of someone behind their back; the same as bârfeală.^[2][3][1]
2. (colloquial) slander.^[1]
3. (slang) A prostitute.^[8]

Related words

• bârfi
• bârfeală
• boarfe

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 97
3. ^ 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, 191
4. ^ 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. bîrfi
5. ^ 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. bârfí
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. bârfi
7. ^ a b Breban, Vasile (1980), Dicționar al limbii române contemporane de uz curent, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. s.v. bîrfă
8. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. bârfă
9. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan” (1998), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române, 2nd ed., București: Univers Enciclopedic, p. 92