coapsă

Forms

coapsă f (plural coapse)^[1] The Psaltirea Scheiană has the old form coafsă at Psalm 44:4.^[2][3] Other old or regional variants are coapță and, in Transylvania, coabză “the croup of a horse”.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin coxa (“hip, haunch”).^{[6][4][5][2][7][1]} The Latin word comes from Proto-Indo-European *kóḱseh₂, from *koḱs- (“joint, limb”); de Vaan reconstructs *koḱs-h₂-.^[1][8] Latin /ks/ became /ps/ here, but Ciorănescu notes that this change is neither clear nor general (compare frasin, măsea and lăsa); the old explanation by its place after the stress and a newer one by Graur and Rosetti both remain uncertain.^[6]

The word survives in Aromanian as coapsă.^[6][9] The Romance cognates include Dalmatian copsa, Italian coscia (from *coxea), Occitan cueisa, Catalan cuxa, French cuisse and Portuguese coxa; compare also Albanian kofšë.^[6][7] Serbo-Croatian kopsa was borrowed from Romanian.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are in the 16th-century psalters: the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki has coapsele at Psalm 44:4, the Psaltirea Scheiană the older form coafsă in the same verse.^[3][4][2] In that verse it names the thigh at which a sword is girded; the Bucharest Bible of 1688 reads „Încinge sabia ta pre coapsa ta” “gird your sword upon your thigh”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The Latin word meant the hip; in Romance it came to name the thigh almost everywhere, and the REW thought only Aromanian kept the old sense.^[7][8] In Romanian it is the thigh of people and the upper part of an animal's hind leg.^[10][5] Ciorănescu also gives the sense “side, slope” of a hill, and MDA2 a figurative plural “the power to beget”.^[6][5] DELR records copsar, a part of the harness that passes over a horse's thighs, from 1898.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – coapsele in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[3][4]
• c. 1573–1578 – coafsă in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[5][2]
• 1589 – coapsele in Coresi's psalter.^[3]
• 1688 – coapsa and coapse in the Bucharest Bible.^[2]
• 1898 – copsar “thigh strap of the harness” in Damé.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The thigh: in people, the part of the leg between the hip and the knee.^[10][5][1]
2. In animals, the upper part of the hind leg, between the croup and the shank.^[10][5]
3. (rare) The side or slope of a hill.^[6]

Word family

• copsar

Related words

• Aromanian coapsă
• Latin coxa

Usage notes

A regional homograph coapsă “fetlock of a horse” comes, according to Drăganu, from Hungarian kapca “foot cloth”.^[11][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. coapsă
3. ^ a b c d 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 44:4
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. coapsă
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, 444
6. ^ a b c d e f g 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. coapsă
7. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2292
8. ^ 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, p. s.v. coxa
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 300
10. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 199
11. ^ 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. coapsă