bucată

Forms

bucată f (plural bucăți)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *buccata (“mouthful”), a derivative of Latin bucca (“cheek; mouth”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} DELR and the DA take its first sense to have been a bite of food, the same development as in French morceau, from mors (“a bite”), and German Bissen, from beißen (“to bite”).^[2][6] Scriban related it to bucă, reading it as “a mouthful”.^[7]

South of the Danube it has a cognate, Aromanian bucatã.^{[3][8][9][10]} The Romance languages formed the same word: Italian boccata, French bouchée, Spanish bocado and Portuguese bocado, all first meaning “what is put in the mouth at once”.^[3][5][1] Wiktionary lists bușeu as a doublet.^[1] The Latin noun is of uncertain origin;^[11][1] Ernout and Meillet suspected a Celtic word.^[11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1425.^[12] DELR's earliest is from 1452, among the Romanian words of the Slavonic documents of the principalities.^[2] The surname Bucată is recorded in old Moldavian documents.^[13] The word occurs nine times in the Bucharest Bible of 1688.^[14] Klein's dictionary of 1801 still glosses it with Latin cibus “food”.^[15]

Semantic evolution

From a bite of food the word came to mean any piece cut or broken from a whole.^[2][6] The plural split by sense: bucăți for pieces, bucate for dishes, food and provisions.^[3][16] In the plural it also came to mean the grain harvest in Muntenia and Transylvania, livestock in Moldavia, and in old Moldavian usage wealth.^[2][3] With de drum it measures a stretch of road and with de vreme a while.^[12][16] The senses “piece of music” and “play” follow French morceau and German Stück.^[2] Slang uses it for a hundred-lei note and for a theft.^[3]

The cook and the kitchen are named from the plural: bucătar “cook” (1633) is formed on bucate, and bucătărie “kitchen” (1691) on bucătar or on bucate.^[2] The word passed from Romanian into Ukrainian, Polish (bukat), Russian dialects and Hungarian (bukáta).^[3][17]

Timeline

• 1425 – the first record, according to Tiktin.^[12]
• 1452 – DELR's first record, in the Slavonic documents of the principalities.^[2]
• 1566 – the diminutive bucățea in Coresi.^[2]
• 1633 – bucătar “cook”.^[2]
• 1688 – bucătăreasă “female cook” in the Bucharest Bible.^[2]
• 1691 – bucătărie “kitchen”.^[2]
• 1739 – the diminutive bucățică.^[2]
• 1801 – bucata glossed “food” in Klein's dictionary.^[15]
• 1853 – îmbucătăți “to cut into pieces” in Kogălniceanu.^[2]
• 1890 – MDA2's first record, in Creangă's tales.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A piece cut, broken or taken from a solid body or a whole; a fragment.^[16][1]
2. With de drum or de cale, a stretch of road; with de vreme or de timp, a while.^[16][4]
3. In trade and industry, a single item of a set of like objects: a vinde cu bucata “to sell by the piece, retail”.^[16][4]
4. A short literary or musical composition, or a passage of one.^[16]
5. In the plural bucate: dishes, food.^[16][1]
6. (popular) In the plural bucate: grain, the cereal harvest.^[16][3]

Word family

• bucătar
• bucătăreasă
• bucătări
• bucătărie
• bucățea
• bucățel
• bucăți
• bucățică
• îmbucătăți
• îmbucăți

Related words

• bucă
• îmbuca
• Aromanian bucatã
• Latin bucca

Usage notes

The plural is bucăți in the senses “piece, item, composition” and bucate in the senses “dishes, food, grain”.^[16][3] Set phrases: om dintr-o bucată “a person of integrity” and a-i face cuiva bucata “to do someone a bad turn on purpose”.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. bucată
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. bucată
4. ^ 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, 251
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1358
6. ^ a b 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. bucată
7. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 200
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 222
9. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 54
10. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 210
11. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ 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. bucată
13. ^ Constantinescu, N. A. (1963), Dicționar onomastic romînesc, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. s.v. bucată
14. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Judecătorii 9:53
15. ^ a b Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 319
16. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 121
17. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. 28