brace

Forms

brace f pl (plural only)^[1] Sbiera's tales have a masculine plural braci: „leapădă-ți bracii” “take off your drawers”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin brācae (“breeches, trousers”), a word Latin took from Celtic.^[4][5][2][1] The Latin word survives in every Romance language: Italian brache, French braies, and Spanish braga and Portuguese braga.^[5][6] Ciorănescu compares Albanian brekë (“drawers”) and Modern Greek βρακί (vrakí, “breeches”).^[5]

Ciorănescu notes that the word itself is almost out of use, but that it lives on in brăcire, brăcinar and îmbrăca.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the word to 1616, and DELR gives that record as a possible personal name Brácea.^[3][4] The common noun “drawers” is first recorded in 1886, in Sbiera's tales from Bukovina, in the masculine form braci.^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

The word stayed in the north: it is a rare word of Bukovina and Maramureș for men's underwear.^[4][7][8] Marian's study of funeral customs (1892) notes that in Moldavia and Wallachia the dead are dressed in new shirts, drawers and socks.^[2][9] Its derivatives name what holds the drawers up: brăcinar “cord threaded through the waist of drawers”, recorded from 1508 in a document.^[4]

Timeline

• 1508 – the derivative bracinar in a document.^[4]
• 1616 – probably as the personal name Brácea.^[3][4]
• 1886 – braci “drawers” in Sbiera's tales.^[4]
• 1892 – brace in Marian's study of funeral customs.^[9][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (plural only, regional, rare, Bukovina, Maramureș) drawers, men's underwear; izmene.^[9][1]

Word family

• brăcinar
• brăcele

Related words

• brăcire
• îmbrăca
• Latin brācae

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. brace
3. ^ 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. brace
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. brace
5. ^ 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. brace
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1252
7. ^ Ștef, Dorin (2021), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din județul Maramureș, 3rd ed., Baia Mare, p. s.v. brace
8. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Adamescu, Gh. (1926–1931), Dicționarul enciclopedic ilustrat „Cartea Românească”, București: Cartea Românească, p. s.v. brace
9. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 239