crăpa

Forms

crăpa (third-person singular present crapă, past participle crăpat), 1st conjugation^[1] The older form is crepa: „Lovi pre împăratul cu un băț în cap de-i crepă capul rău” “he struck the emperor on the head with a stick so that his head split badly”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin crepō (“to rattle, crack”).^{[4][3][5][6][1]} Latin meant “to make a sharp noise”, which led to “to burst with a noise”, a sense rare in Latin but kept in the Romance languages.^[3] The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian crep, Megleno-Romanian crep and Istro-Romanian crepu.^[4][7][8][9] Romance cognates include Italian crepare, Old Occitan crebar, French crever and Spanish quebrar.^[4][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is crepa in the Codicele Bratul of 1559–1560.^[3] Tiktin's oldest quotation is Moxa's chronicle of 1620, where a blow splits the emperor's head.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The core sense is splitting or bursting, of stone, wood or skin, and Romanian also uses the verb for opening a door or the eyes a crack.^[2][6] The phrase se crapă de ziuă “day is breaking” has parallels in Old French l'aube crieve, Bulgarian and Greek.^[3] The sense “to die”, of animals and contemptuously of people, is shared with Italian crepare and French crever, and German krepieren has it from Italian.^[4][3][11] Colloquially the verb also means eating greedily, and Cantemir used it as a Latinism for “to shout”.^[2][3]

Its derivatives include crăpătură “crack”, from 1582, which DELR derives from Latin crepātūra, and the noun crăpat, from 1852.^[3] Ciorănescu adds crăpăcios “brittle” and crăpelniță “grub”.^[4]

Timeline

• 1559-1560 – crepa in the Codicele Bratul, the first record.^[3]
• 1582 – crepătură “crack” in the Palia of Orăștie.^[3]
• 1620 – crepă “split” in Moxa's chronicle.^[2]
• 1852 – crăpat “daybreak” in Bălcescu.^[3]
• 1892 – crăpăcios “brittle”.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive and reflexive) to crack, burst or break apart, from frost or a blow.^[6][1]
2. (transitive) to split, break open: a crăpa un buștean “to split a log”.^[6][1]
3. (of elastic things) to snap, and of skin to become rough and chapped.^[6][5]
4. (transitive) to open slightly: a crăpa ușa “to open the door a crack”, and reflexively a se crăpa de ziuă “to dawn”.^[6][2]
5. (ironic) to die, of animals and people.^[6][1]
6. (pejorative) to eat greedily.^[6][2]

Word family

• crăpat
• crăpăcios
• crăpătură
• crăpăturică
• crăpelniță

Related words

• Latin crepō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. crăpa
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. crăpa
4. ^ 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. crăpa
5. ^ 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, 539
6. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 246
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 310
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 80
9. ^ Byhan, Arthur (1899), Istrorumänisches Glossar, Sechster Jahresbericht des Instituts für rumänische Sprache zu Leipzig: 174–366, p. 254
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2313
11. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 540