bucă

Forms

bucă f (plural buci)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin bucca (“puffed cheek; mouth”).^{[2][3][4][5][1][6]} De Vaan considers “cheek” the original sense of the Latin word and “mouth” a secondary, at first derogatory one; its origin is uncertain, and a Celtic source has been suspected.^[7][1]

Romanian kept the old sense “cheek”.^[3][8] Breton boc'h has it too, while the other Romance languages took the word for “mouth”: Italian bocca, French bouche, Catalan boca, Spanish boca and Portuguese boca.^[3][6][9] It survives in Aromanian bucã (“mouthful; cheek; thigh, buttock”).^[10][11] Ciorănescu also lists a Megleno-Romanian form; there bucă is a mill race, which Capidan derives from the Latin word and the DDM from Macedonian and Bulgarian.^[3][12][13] Ciorănescu compares Albanian bukë (“bread”), which also comes from the Latin word.^[3][6][14]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the first certain record to 1560–1561, in Coresi's Tetraevanghel; a personal name of 1202–1203 may be an earlier record, but it is uncertain.^[2][15] Tiktin quotes Coresi's Luke 6:29 with the sense “cheek”: „Cine te va ucide în bucă, dă și alaltă” “whoever strikes you on the cheek, offer the other one too”.^[15] MDA2 gives a Tetraevanghel of 1574 as the first record.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The first sense was “cheek”, often specified as buca obrazului or buca feței to keep it apart from the second.^[16][15] By analogy (compare German Backe) the word came to mean “buttock”, specified as buca șezutului or buca curului.^[16] Dosoftei's verse psalter has the plural in this sense.^[16] Ciorănescu notes that the sense “cheek” has lost ground to obraz because of the indecent associations of the word, while “buttock” is common everywhere.^[3] The phrase a face buci means “to grow fat”.^[16]

Of the derivatives that describe a full face, bucălat “chubby-cheeked” (about 1650) is a compound of bucă and lată “broad” for DELR.^[2] Ciorănescu finds its formation unclear and suggests a suffix -lău.^[3] Bucălai “(sheep) white with a black muzzle” (1852, Alecsandri) is bucă + laie “black” for Tiktin, DA and DEX, and goes back to bucălău for Ciorănescu.^[2][3] Bucos “chubby” (1691–1697) is a Romanian derivative for DA, and Latin buccōsus for Candrea–Densusianu.^[2]

Timeline

• 1560-1561 – first certain record, in Coresi's Tetraevanghel.^[2]
• 1574 – buca dereaptă “the right cheek” in a Tetraevanghel.^[4][16]
• c. 1650 – bucălat “chubby-cheeked”.^[2]
• c. 1660 – the Slavonic–Romanian lexicons gloss ланита “cheek” with it.^[17]
• 1673 – buci “buttocks” in Dosoftei's verse psalter.^[16]
• 1691-1697 – bucos “chubby” in Corbea's dictionary.^[2]
• 1852 – bucălai in Alecsandri.^[2]
• 1898 – bucar, a strap of the harness that runs over the horse's hindquarters.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (popular) Buttock.^[5][4][1]
2. (popular) Cheek: the fleshy part of the face below the temple.^[5][4][18]
3. (regional) A mouthful, food.^[19]

Word family

• bucălat
• bucălai
• bucălan
• bucălău
• bucăliu
• bucos
• bucar

Related words

• bucată
• îmbuca
• bucea
• Aromanian bucã
• Latin bucca

Usage notes

The plural is buci, used more often than the singular.^[4][20]

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 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. bucă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. bucă
4. ^ 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, 251
5. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 121
6. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1357
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 29
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 222
11. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 211
12. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 46
13. ^ Saramandu, Nicolae (coord.) et al. (2010–), Dicționarul dialectului meglenoromân, general și etimologic, fascicles in Fonetică și dialectologie XXIX–, p. 99
14. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
15. ^ 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. bucă
16. ^ a b c d e f 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. bucă
17. ^ 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. bucă
18. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. bucă
19. ^ Dima, Eugenia (coord.) (2007), Dicționar explicativ ilustrat al limbii române, Chișinău: Arc / Gunivas, p. s.v. bucă
20. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1, 284