coace

Forms

coace (third-person singular present coace, past participle copt, third-person subjunctive coacă) 3rd conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin cocō (“to cook”), the popular form of Latin coquō (“to cook, bake; to ripen”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ- (“to cook, ripen”), with /p/ assimilated to the /kʷ/ that followed.^[6][1]

The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian coc, Megleno-Romanian coc and Istro-Romanian coc.^[3][2][7] DELR calls the Latin verb pan-Romance: Italian cuocere, French cuire, Occitan cozer, Spanish cocer and Portuguese cozer.^[2][3][5] Ciorănescu and the REW note that the sense “to ripen” is found in some Italian dialects too, as Calabrian cottu (“ripe”).^[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is Coresi's Tetraevanghel of 1560–1561, in Mark 4:29, of the crop that ripens.^[2][8] MDA2 dates it to a text of 1560 in the Cuvente den bătrâni, where women “will bake your bread”: „Vor coace muieri pâinile voastre”.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

Already in Latin the verb meant both “to cook” and “to ripen”, and Romanian keeps both.^[10][4] In the kitchen it is above all baking in the oven, but also roasting in the embers: eggs, chestnuts, potatoes.^[10][4] It is used of bricks fired in a kiln and of flax bleached with ash.^[3][10] Fruit and grain se coc “ripen” in the sun, and figuratively a person “matures”.^[4][10] The DA compares the same Latin sense in praecox and notes a parallel in Albanian, Modern Greek and Bulgarian.^[10] A boil or wound that fills with pus also coace.^[4]

Like Latin coquō, the verb also means “to hatch a plan”, usually an evil one: a-i coace cuiva turta or a i-o coace “to plot against someone”.^[10][4][8]

Timeline

• 1560–1561 – Coresi's Tetraevanghel, the first record.^[2][8]
• 1582 – cocător “baker” in the Palia de la Orăștie.^[2]
• 1649 – coace and copt “ripe” in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[11]
• 1760–1770 – coptură “abscess; pastry”.^[2]
• 1847 – the noun copt “baking, ripeness” in Anton Pann.^[2]
• 1885 – cocătură “baking; baked dough” in Transylvania.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To bake: to cook food, especially dough, in an oven;^[4][1] (reflexive) to be baked: Pâinea se coace în cuptor.^[4][1]
2. (reflexive, of fruit and seeds) To ripen in the sun;^[4][1] (transitive, of the sun or heat) to make ripe;^[4][1] (figurative, of people) to mature.^[4][1]
3. (reflexive, figurative, of people) To swelter, to be stifled by heat.^[4]
4. (transitive, figurative) To plot, to hatch a scheme against someone: a-i coace cuiva turta.^[4][9]
5. (intransitive, of a boil or inflammation) To suppurate, to fill with pus.^[4][12]

Word family

• cocător
• cocătură
• cocăt
• cocări
• copt
• coptură
• necopt
• răscoace

Related words

• cuptor
• scoace
• Latin coquō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. coace
3. ^ a b c d e 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. coace
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 198
5. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2212
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 74
8. ^ 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. coáce
9. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 441
10. ^ a b c d e f g 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. coace
11. ^ 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. copt
12. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. coace