ciumă

Forms

ciumă f (plural ciume)^[1]

Etymology

It is probably inherited from Latin cȳma (“bud, shoot, top of a plant”), which is from Ancient Greek κῦμα (kûma, “swelling; wave”).^[2][3][4][1] The word first meant “swelling”, a sense that survives in regional Romanian for a growth on maize stalks, and the disease was named after the swellings of the plague, the buboes in the armpits and groin.^[5][2] Aromanian has a parallel in pănucl'ă, both “tumour” and “plague”.^[2][5]

The word lives on south of the Danube: Aromanian ciumã means “swelling”, “top, peak” and “tuft of wool”, and Megleno-Romanian ciumă “tuft of wool” and “plague”.^[3][6] The other Romance languages continue the variant cīma in the senses “top, summit; shoot”: Italian cima, French cime, Spanish cima.^[3][2][7] Ciorănescu notes that the regular outcome would have been ⟨*cimă⟩, with a secondary /u/ as in bucium, and that a spelling Vulgar Latin ciuma is found in late glosses.^[2]

Words for “plague” of the same form are found across eastern Europe: Bulgarian чума (čuma), Russian чума (čuma), and Polish and Hungarian forms.^[2][5] Pușcariu, Berneker and Capidan took them all from Romanian, since none of them can be explained within its own language, and DA links the spread with the plague of Justinian's time.^[2][5] Miklosich and Cihac instead derived the Romanian word from Old Church Slavonic, Tiktin and the CADE following them, and others proposed Bulgarian, Albanian or Turkish.^[2][8] DELR rejects the Slavic source because the change of /ky/ to /ču/ is Romanian; the word passed from Romanian or Danubian Latin into the South Slavic languages, and Romanian passed it on to Hungarian, Ukrainian and Polish.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR records a personal name of 1221, which it calls uncertain, and the common noun from 1581.^[3] The first quotations in DA are from a 16th-century Leviticus printed in Gaster's chrestomathy and a translation of Herodotus, „Toți au murit de ciumă” “They all died of the plague”.^[5][9] The sense is the disease.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The old sense “swelling” is kept only regionally, in Sălaj and Hațeg, for a growth on maize and for the smut of maize.^[3][5][9] The main sense, the plague, is recorded in chronicles and letters of the 17th to 19th centuries, when epidemics struck Bucharest and Moldavia.^[5] The 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons use it for Slavonic words meaning “ruin, destruction”, and the Bible of 1688 has it in Luke 21:11, where pestilences are foretold.^[10][11]

In folk belief the plague was a being, a monster, an old woman or death itself, that brought the disease; personifications such as cium, ciuman and ciumoaie appear in folk poems.^[9][3] From these come the figurative senses: a very ugly, wicked woman, and a calamity.^[4][9] The phrase ciuma brună “the brown plague” names Nazism and fascism.^[4] Names of diseases of cattle, hens and bees, and plant names such as ciumăfaie “thorn apple”, use the word too.^[9][2]

Timeline

• 1221 – a personal name, possibly this word.^[3]
• 16th century – ciumă in a Leviticus printed in Gaster's chrestomathy.^[5][9]
• 1581 – first record as a common noun.^[3]
• c. 1650 – the verb ciuma “to infect with plague”.^[3]
• c. 1660-1670 – in the Slavonic–Romanian lexicon Lex.St.^[10]
• 1688 – ciume “pestilences” in the Bucharest Bible.^[11]
• 1691-1697 – ciumos “sick with plague; carrying the plague”.^[3]
• 1787 – ciumat “infected with plague”.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. plague, pestilence: a very severe infectious and epidemic disease with high fever, delirium and swollen lymph nodes; pestă.^[4][9][1]
2. (figurative) A very ugly and wicked person, especially a woman.^[4][9]
3. (figurative) A great misfortune, a scourge: ciuma brună “the brown plague”, Nazism and fascism.^[4]
4. (folklore) A mythical being, imagined as a monster, an old woman or death, believed to bring the plague.^[9]
5. (regional) A swelling on the stalk of maize; the smut of maize.^[9][3]
6. In the compound ciuma-apelor, the Canadian waterweed (Elodea canadensis).^[4]

Word family

• cium
• ciuma
• ciuman
• ciumărea
• ciumercă
• ciumos
• înciuma
• ciumat

Related words

• ciumăfaie
• Aromanian ciumã
• Latin cyma

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. ciumă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. ciumă
4. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 191
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. ciumă
6. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 315
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2438
8. ^ Cihac, A. de (1879), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane II: Éléments slaves, magyars, turcs, grecs-moderne et albanais, Frankfurt am Main, p. 58
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 422
10. ^ a b 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. ciumă
11. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Lk 21:11