colastră

Forms

colastră f (uncountable)^[1] The Pravila de la Govora (1640) has corastră: „Preotul să nu mănânce corastră de la vaca lui până la 7 săptămână” “the priest shall not eat the beestings of his own cow until the seventh week”.^[2][3] Regional forms include coraslă (the DEX headword), corastă in the Banat, curastă in Maramureș and curastră in the Banat.^[2][4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *colastra, a form of Latin colostra (“beestings”) (also colostrum), a pastoral word of obscure origin.^{[3][6][7][1][8]} Ciorănescu takes corastră as the regular outcome, with intervocalic /l/ > /r/, and the standard form as a dissimilation of the first /r/ to /l/.^[6] Romance has forms in -ostr- (Italian colostro, Spanish calostro, Portuguese colostro) and Asturian culiestru.^[3][6][7]

The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian curastrã and Megleno-Romanian gulastră.^[6][3][9][1] Through Romanian shepherds it spread to the neighbouring languages: Bulgarian коластра (kolastra), Serbo-Croatian kònastra, Slovak kurastva, Polish kulastra, Hungarian gulászta and Modern Greek κουλιάστρα (kouliástra).^[6][7][2] The Bulgarian etymological dictionary, following Romanski and Berneker, takes the Bulgarian word straight from Balkan Latin and the Romanian form with /l/ from Bulgarian;^[10][6] Ciorănescu calls this extremely improbable.^[10][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is corastră in the Pravila de la Govora of 1640, forbidding a priest to eat the beestings of his own cow.^[3][2] The glossary Anonymus Caransebesiensis of about 1650 has kurastră, glossed as thin new milk.^[7] MDA2's first record, for the form colastra, is Jipescu's Opincaru of 1881.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The word keeps the Latin sense, the first milk of a cow or other animal in the days after it gives birth, which thickens when boiled and tastes sweetish.^[7][11] It also means curdled milk.^[6][7][11] In the Banat the beestings of the household cow were offered for the dead.^[7] The word is used across the whole country, as the Romanian linguistic atlas shows.^[6]

Timeline

• 1640 – corastră in the Pravila de la Govora, the first record.^[3][2]
• c. 1650 – kurastră in Anonymus Caransebesiensis.^[7]
• 1845 – the verb corăsli “(of milk) to go off”.^[3]
• 1881 – colastra in Jipescu's Opincaru.^[11][7]
• 1907 – the verb corăslui “(of boiling milk) to curdle”.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. colostrum, beestings: the first milk of an animal, or of a mother, just after giving birth.^[11][5][1]
2. Curdled milk.^[11][12]

Word family

• corăsli
• corăslui

Related words

• coraslă
• colostru
• Aromanian curastrã
• Latin colostra

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. coraslă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. colastră
4. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 315
5. ^ a b DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 235
6. ^ 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. colastră
7. ^ 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. colastră
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 147
10. ^ a b Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 2, 548
11. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 458
12. ^ Bulgăr, Gheorghe; Constantinescu-Dobridor, Gheorghe (2002), Dicționar de arhaisme și regionalisme, 2 vols., București: Saeculum Vizual