fată

Forms

fată f (plural fete)^[1] MDA2 records the old spelling feată.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin fēta (“a woman or a female animal that has just given birth”), the adjective fētus used as a noun.^{[3][4][2][1][5]}

It survives in all four branches: Aromanian featã, Megleno-Romanian fętă and Istro-Romanian fętę.^[3][6][7][8] Elsewhere in Romance the Latin word lives on mostly as a name of farm animals: Friulian fede, Lombard feda and Piedmontese fea mean “sheep”, and Spanish jeda is, in a dialect, a cow that has calved.^[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1219, citing Drăganu.^[9] In Romanian texts the plural fetele “the girls” appears in the Hurmuzaki Psalter of the early 16th century.^[10] MDA2's first record is the Codicele Voronețean.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Romanian the word came to mean a girl or unmarried young woman, a maiden and a daughter.^[3][11] With mare it means a marriageable girl or a virgin: fată mare.^[3][9] Fată bătrână is an old maid, and fată în casă a housemaid.^[11] Graur thought this last phrase arose in boyar households, where the maid who cleaned the rooms was set against the servants who worked outside; he rejected a copy of French femme de chambre.^[12]

Ciorănescu also records a folk name of the constellation Orion and a slang sense, a 500-lei banknote.^[3] In the vocative women are addressed as fă! or fa!.^[4]

Timeline

• 1219 – first record, cited by Tiktin from Drăganu.^[9]
• early 16th century – fetele in the Hurmuzaki Psalter.^[10]
• 16th century – in the Codicele Voronețean.^[2]
• 1649 – Mardarie's lexicon uses fată to gloss Slavonic дщеръ “daughter”.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. girl: a female person, especially an unmarried one;^[11][1] fată bătrână “old maid”;^[11][1] fată în casă “housemaid”.^[11][1]
2. A virgin, maiden.^[11]
3. (in relation to the parents) A daughter.^[11][1]

Word family

• fătoi
• fătălău
• fetește
• feti
• fetie
• fetișcană
• fetiță

Related words

• făt
• făta
• Aromanian featã
• Latin fēta

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 879
3. ^ 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. fată
4. ^ a b Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 51
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 454
7. ^ Saramandu, Nicolae (coord.) et al. (2010–), Dicționarul dialectului meglenoromân, general și etimologic, fascicles in Fonetică și dialectologie XXIX–, p. 164
8. ^ Kovačec, August (1998), Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik (s gramatikom i tekstovima), Pula
9. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. fată
10. ^ a b 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 67:27
11. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 382
12. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1975), Alte etimologii românești, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. fată
13. ^ 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. fată