faulă

Forms

faulă f (plural faule)^[1] The variant făulă is the form of the Academy dictionary and of the folk texts it quotes: „Ian spune-mi făula lui” “just tell me what he looks like”.^[2][3]

Etymology

Ciorănescu takes it as inherited from Latin fābula (“story”), with the same sound changes as sulă from sūbula and staul from stabulum, and a shift of the stress as in aud from audiō.^[3] This makes it a doublet of the learned fabulă.^[3][1] The Academy dictionary and the first editions of Tiktin left the origin unknown; the third edition of Tiktin cites Ciorănescu's explanation.^[2][4] Wiktionary traces the sense from “story” to “description” and then to “appearance”.^[1] Romance has the same syncopated form of the Latin word in Italian fola (“fable; lie”) and Occitan faula (“lie”).^[3][5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the word to the Lexicon de la Buda of 1825.^[4] The Academy dictionary records it from the west of Transylvania, the Hațeg country, with the sense of form, face or look, and quotes the folk songs that Frâncu and Candrea collected among the Moți.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The dictionaries give it as “appearance, look”: in the Hațeg country one says that by their looks one person resembles another.^[2][1] Ciorănescu notes that the word is little studied and little used, and that it seems to mean bearing or disposition rather than physical appearance.^[3]

Timeline

• 1825 – in the Lexicon de la Buda.^[4]
• late 19th century – făula in the folk songs of the Moți collected by Frâncu and Candrea.^[2][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. (regional, western Transylvania) appearance, look; manner, bearing.^[3][2][1]

Related words

• fabulă
• Latin fābula

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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. făulă
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. faulă
4. ^ 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. faulă
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli