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burtă

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Etymology and origin of the Romanian word burtă

Confidence
Unknown
First attested
1691–1697 Teodor Corbea's dictionary More words from the 17th century

Pronunciation

Forms

burtă f (plural burți)[1]

Etymology

The origin of the word is unknown: DEX, the DA and Tiktin call it of unknown origin, and DELR calls its etymology uncertain.[2][3][4][5] Tiktin thinks it is probably related to bârdăhan, borț and burduf.[4]

DELR presents as possible a substrate word related to the second of these, “belly of a pregnant woman”, which would mean a shift from “load, pregnancy” to “big belly”.[5] On this view, put forward by Giuglea and followed by Russu, Poghirc and Ivănescu, it is a derivative with a t-suffix of Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- (“to carry”), with the zero grade of the root, and is compared with Albanian barsë (“pregnant”) and bark (“belly”) and with Germanic words for a burden such as German Bürde.[5] Russu also thought of a root meaning “to swell”, which DELR finds less likely.[5] DELR adds that the word was expressive at first and replaced the inherited pântece and vintre as the neutral word for the abdomen in the south of the Daco-Romanian area and in the standard language.[5]

Ciorănescu also keeps the word together with that noun: he calls the word for the pregnant belly an expressive creation and takes the word for the belly as a singular made from its plural.[6][5] Other proposals that DELR and Ciorănescu list are a Gepidic word related to the same German word (Diculescu), a Bulgarian source (Pascu), a metathesis of Serbo-Croatian trba (“belly”) (Scriban), a Turkic and Mongolic base shared with the word for a wineskin and brought by the Huns (Hubschmid), and a relation with buric and the same wineskin word, with a Slavic diminutive suffix (Skok).[5][6][7] Wiktionary suggests instead Vulgar Latin *umbulita (“small navel”), from *umbulicus, with the initial ⟨um-⟩ taken for the indefinite article o; it finds the Albanian comparison unlikely on phonetic grounds.[1] Diculescu noted that the Bulgarian dialect word for the belly is a loan from Romanian, and BER agrees.[8][5][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is Teodor Corbea's dictionary of 1691–1697, with the sense “abdomen”.[5] An earlier record, the personal name Burtul in a document of 1538–1544, is uncertain.[5] Tiktin dates the word to about 1544 from it.[5][4] MDA2 gives Anton Pann's Noul Erotocrit of 1837 as its first record.[10]

Semantic evolution

The core sense is the belly of a person or an animal, a popular word beside abdomen and pântece.[2][5] By analogy it names the bulging part of an object, such as the belly of a barrel.[2][11] Tiktin records it for the stomach as something that demands food, and in burtă de popă “a priest's belly”, said of a glutton.[4][10] In cooking, ciorbă de burtă is a soup made from beef stomach.[2] In Oltenia and Muntenia the word names a sausage stuffed into a pig's stomach.[12][13]

Since the 1970s the press has used the plural burți for the overlong passages of a novel or a film, and slang dictionaries record the sense “unwanted length in a text”.[14][15] The derivative burtăverde “philistine, materialist bourgeois”, an ironic word, appears in Alecsandri in 1871.[5][4] burtieră was formed after French ventrière and first meant a belt for the belly; it now also names the strip of headlines at the bottom of a television screen.[5]

Timeline

  • 1538–1544 – the personal name Burtul, an uncertain early record.[5][4]
  • 1558 – the personal name Burtea; as a common noun “big-bellied man, glutton” it appears in 1895.[5]
  • 1691–1697 – burtă “abdomen” in Teodor Corbea's dictionary.[5]
  • 1837 – in Anton Pann's Noul Erotocrit.[10]
  • 1845 – the adjective burtos “big-bellied”, in Heliade-Rădulescu.[5]
  • 1871 – burtăverde “philistine”, in Alecsandri.[5]
  • 1926 – burtieră, in Camil Petrescu.[5]
  • 1977 – burți for the overlong passages of a book, in the press.[14]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (popular) The belly, the abdomen.[2][10] Ciorbă de burtă is a soup made from beef stomach.[2]
  2. (figurative) The rounded, bulging part of an object: burta unei sticle “the belly of a bottle”.[2][16]
  3. (regional, Oltenia and Muntenia) A sausage made in a pig's stomach filled with offal, bacon and meat.[12][13]
  4. (slang) A long-winded passage of a text or a film.[15][14]

Word family

  • burde
  • burtăverde
  • burtăverzime
  • burtea
  • burtică
  • burticică
  • burtieră
  • burtos
  • borț
  • burduf
  • burduhan
  • Albanian bark

Usage notes

A sta cu burta la soare means “to idle”, and burtă de popă is said of someone who eats and drinks a great deal.[2][10] A variant bârtă is recorded in the north.[5][7]

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 127
  3. ^ 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. burtă
  4. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. burtă
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u 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. burtă
  6. ^ 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. borț
  7. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 209
  8. ^ Diculescu, Constantin (1929), "Altgermanische Bestandteile und die rumänische Kontinuitätsfrage, Erster Teil", Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 49, pp. 385 ff., p. 431
  9. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 1, 91
  10. ^ 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, 264
  11. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1, 302
  12. ^ a b Cazacu, Boris (coord.) et al. (1967), Glosar dialectal. Oltenia, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. 13
  13. ^ a b Marin, Maria; Mărgărit, Iulia, Glosar dialectal. Muntenia, București: Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”
  14. ^ a b c Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. burtă
  15. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. burtă
  16. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. burtă
Cite this entry

“Burtă.” Etymologically, 11 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/ro/burt%C4%83. Accessed 12 Nov. 2026.

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