cort

Forms

cort n (plural corturi)^[1] Transylvania has the variant scort: „Cine-i în ceste scorturi?” “Who is in these tents?”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Byzantine Greek κόρτη (kórti, “tent, camp baggage”).^[3][4][2][1] DELR, Tiktin and the DA call the Greek word medieval;^[5][6][7] Ciorănescu, MDA2 and NODEX call it Modern Greek.^[5][6][7] The DA counts it among the few Byzantine military terms that reached as far as Transylvania.^[4]

The Greek word is from Latin cohors (“enclosure, yard; cohort”), so the Romanian word is a doublet of the inherited curte “court, yard” and of the later loan cohortă.^[3][5][8][1] Cihac had already traced it to the same Latin word.^[9] Scriban's view, that the Greek word comes from Italian cortina (“curtain”), is his own.^[10]

Hungarian borrowed the word from Romanian: Hungarian kort “Roma tent; umbrella” and kortuj (“wattle hut”).^[5][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is in Coresi's Praxiu of 1563.^[2] DELR and MDA2 cite the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583).^[3][6] The sense was “tent”, and in the scriptures the Tabernacle.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The Slavonic–Romanian lexicons of the 17th century use the word to render Old Church Slavonic скиния (skinija, “tent, tabernacle”).^[11] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 has it hundreds of times, for the tents of the patriarchs and the Tabernacle;^[12][2] cortul mărturiei is the Tabernacle of the testimony.^[12][2]

The tent became the mark of the nomadic Roma: corturar “nomadic Roma” is recorded from 1822, a umbla cu cortul means to have no fixed home, and ca la ușa cortului “as at the tent door” means rudely, coarsely; it is also the name of a folk dance.^{[3][13][2][6]} In old Transylvanian use the word also meant “umbrella”, and its diminutive cortel kept that sense in Transylvania and Moldavia from 1841.^[3][5]

Timeline

• 1563 – first record, in Coresi's Praxiu.^[2]
• c. 1563-1583 – in the Codicele Voronețean.^[3][6]
• 1649 – in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[11]
• 1688 – frequent in the Bucharest Bible.^[14]
• 1822 – corturar “nomadic Roma”.^[3]
• 1825 – the diminutive cortuț.^[3]
• 1841 – cortel “umbrella”.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. tent: a portable shelter that can be taken down, of strong waterproof cloth, plastic or hide stretched on stakes.^[13][3][1]
2. Foaie de cort: a sheet of waterproof cloth or plastic cut so that tents can be made from it.^[13][6]
3. (figurative) a umbla cu cortul: to have no fixed home, to wander about;^[13][7] ca la ușa cortului: rudely, without shame.^[13][7]
4. (Transylvania, obsolete) umbrella.^[3][5]

Word family

• cortel
• cortelar
• cortișor
• cortuleț
• corturăresc
• cortuț
• corturar

Related words

• curte
• cohortă

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. cort
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. cort
4. ^ a b c d 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. cort
5. ^ a b c d e f 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. cort
6. ^ 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, 517
7. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. cort
8. ^ Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 89
9. ^ Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 60
10. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 352
11. ^ 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. cort
12. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ieșirea 26:7
13. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 240
14. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Facerea 12:8