damă

Forms

damă f (plural dame)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French dame, also borrowed from Italian dama, the Italian word itself from French.^[2][3][4] DER, Tiktin and Wiktionary give French alone.^[5][6][1] For the game of draughts the DA also compares German Damenspiel,^[7] and Ciorănescu reports Corominas's view that this sense really goes back to the name of Damascus.^[5]

The French word comes from Late Latin domna, a shortened Latin domina (“mistress of the house”), the feminine of dominus, from domus (“house”).^[1][2] The same Latin word gave Romanian doamnă, so the two are doublets.^[1][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Foletul novei, the calendar of Constantin Brâncoveanu's court, in 1699.^[2][6] MDA2 cites the same text under its range 1693–1704, with the sense “woman, lady”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

In the early 19th century damă was a lady of some social standing: Dinicu Golescu writes of schools where ladies learn, and Negruzzi of a gallery crowded with beautiful ladies.^[7] Over that century the word sank until, at the start of the 20th, it often meant “prostitute”;^[10] Graur observed in 1963 that it had risen again, kept in coafor de dame “ladies' hairdresser” and in the game terms.^[10] Phrases such as damă de onoare “lady-in-waiting” and damă de companie “lady's companion” come from the lady sense.^[9][11]

The game senses came with the French word: the queen in cards and chess, and in the plural the game of draughts and its pieces.^[2][6] Regionally the word also names a chequered pattern woven into carpets, and a peasant game on New Year's Eve in which boys go from house to house dressed as girls or old women.^[2]

Timeline

• 1699 – first record, in the Foletul novei.^[2][6]
• 1795 – madamă, from French madame.^[2]
• 1825 – the Lexicon of Buda glosses damă both as “lady” and as “harlot”.^[12]
• 1829 – damicelă and demoazelă “young lady”.^[2]
• c. 1832 – dămesc, dămime and dămiță in Iordache Golescu.^[2]
• 1862 – damier, the draughtboard.^[2]
• 1936 – dameză “loose woman” in Cocea.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (dated) A lady;^[3][10] de damă “for women”, as in lenjerie de damă.^[3][10]
2. (derogatory) A woman of loose morals, a prostitute.^[3][9]
3. (card games) The queen: each of the four cards that show a woman's figure, as in dama de pică “the queen of spades”.^[3][10]
4. (chess) The queen; regină.^[3][1]
5. (in the plural) draughts or checkers, played with white and black pieces on a board like a chessboard; also one of its pieces.^[3][9]

Word family

• dameză
• damicelă
• damier
• dămesc
• dămime
• dămiță
• demoazelă
• madamă

Related words

• doamnă

Usage notes

A technical damă, the notch in a boat's gunwale where the oar rests and formerly a cast-iron plate closing a crucible door, has a separate source: DELR gives French dame in the sense “dam”, from Dutch, with German Damm for the metallurgical sense, and the DLR and MDA2 derive it from the German word.^[2][13][9] DEX lists it as a third sense of this word.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. damă
3. ^ 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. 270
4. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual
5. ^ a b 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. damă
6. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. damă
7. ^ a b 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. damă
8. ^ Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 95
9. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 597
10. ^ a b c d e Graur, Alexandru (1963), Etimologii romînești, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. s.v. damă
11. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 9
12. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 163
13. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. damă