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ciudă

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Etymology and origin of the Romanian word ciudă

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
c. 1500–1520 Psaltirea Hurmuzaki More words from the 15th century
Borrowed from
Old Church Slavonic чоудо
Ultimate origin
Proto-Slavic *čudo

Forms

ciudă f (plural ciude)[1] An old plural ciuzi survives in folk verse: „Mari ciuzi am prăvit” “we have seen great wonders”.[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic чоудо (čudo, “miracle, wonder”), from Proto-Slavic *čudo.[3][4][5][6][1] The Slavonic word also passed into the neighbouring languages: Ciorănescu compares Bulgarian чудо (čudo), Russian чудо (čudo), Hungarian csoda and Albanian çudi.[4][7]

It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian ciudie “wonder” and Megleno-Romanian ciudă.[4][7] Ciorănescu thinks the doublet ciondă “monster, scarecrow” came through Hungarian.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the word to about 1500, and the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century has the plural ciudele “the wonders”.[3][8] The first sense was “miracle, wonder”, as in the Palia de la Orăștie (1582), where God tells Moses that if they will not believe „acestor doao ciude” “these two signs”, they will not heed his words.[2]

Semantic evolution

The old senses “miracle” and “amazement” gave “something strange”.[4] From there the word moved to the feelings it now names: vexation, spite and envy.[4][3][5] Ciorănescu refers to Șăineanu's study of semantics for this shift.[4] Tiktin finds the sense “vexation” already in the 17th century, in Dosoftei's Lives of the Saints, where a father, hearing of his son's death, „de ciudă ... căzu jos de muri” “fell down dead of grief”.[2] Regional senses are “shame” and “misfortune”.[3] In Moldavia Ciuda-lui-Arhanghel is a church feast on 6 September.[5]

The derivatives keep both layers: ciudat “strange”, recorded from about 1500, first also meant “wonderful”, and the Slavonic compound ciudotvoreț “miracle-worker” was borrowed whole.[3][4]

Timeline

  • c. 1500–1520 – ciudele “the wonders” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.[8][3]
  • c. 1500 – ciudat “wonderful, strange”.[3]
  • 1561 – preaciudat “most wonderful”.[3]
  • 1574 – ciudă “wonder” in the Tetraevanghel.[5]
  • 1582 – ciude “signs” in the Palia de la Orăștie.[2]
  • 1632 – ciudotvoreț “miracle-worker”.[3]
  • 17th century – the sense “vexation” in Dosoftei.[2]
  • 1688 – ciudesă “miracle”.[3]
  • 1703 – ciudos “spiteful; wonderful”.[3]
  • 1818 – ciudățenie “oddity”.[3]
  • 1838 – înciuda “to vex”.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. spite, resentment: regret or envy mixed with vexation or ill will: Plânge de ciudă.[6][5]
  2. anger, fury.[5][1]
  3. (obsolete) A miracle, a wonder; amazement.[5][4]

Word family

  • ciudat
  • ciudățenie
  • ciudos
  • înciuda
  • ciudesă
  • ciudotvoreț

Usage notes

În ciuda means “in spite of”: în ciuda vremii “in spite of the weather”, and în ciuda faptului că “although”.[6][5] A face cuiva în ciudă is “to do something to annoy someone”.[6] Old texts have the plural ciudese and a singular ciudesă, from the Slavonic oblique stem čudes-.[2][3]

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ 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. ciudă
  3. ^ 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. ciudă
  4. ^ 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. ciudă
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 420
  6. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 191
  7. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 366
  8. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 9:1

Related etymologies

  • ceas · also from Old Church Slavonic
  • clădire · also from Old Church Slavonic
  • mirosi · also from Old Church Slavonic
  • coborî · also from Old Church Slavonic
  • bogat · also from Old Church Slavonic
  • trezi · also from Old Church Slavonic
  • vinovat · also from Old Church Slavonic
  • zbor · also from Old Church Slavonic
Cite this entry

“Ciudă.” Etymologically, 12 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/ro/ciud%C4%83. Accessed 12 Nov. 2026.

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