floare

Forms

floare f (plural flori)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin flōrem (“flower”), the accusative of the Latin noun, which lives on in nearly every Romance language.^[2][3][4][1] The Latin word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₃- (“to bloom”).^[1][5]

The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian floare and Megleno-Romanian floari.^[2][6][7][8] Its Romance cognates include Italian fiore, French fleur, Occitan flor, Catalan flor, Spanish flor and Portuguese flor.^[2][4] Pușcariu notes that Romanian shares the feminine gender with French, Spanish, Portuguese and the dialects of northern Italy, while the standard Italian word is masculine.^[3]

The rare plural sense “menstruation” is shared with other Romance languages;^[2][9] Capidan derived it from fluōrēs, and the REW holds that this word merged with the plural of the word for flower, so that no new formation from the word for flower is needed.^[2][9] The REW also takes the double meaning of Albanian ljulje, “flower” and “menstruation”, as a loan translation from Romanian, after Capidan.^[9][2] The old sense “colour” is a calque, never in popular use, of Old Church Slavonic цвѣтъ (cvětŭ), which meant both flower and colour.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1441, in the Slavonic documents of the Romanian lands.^[10] In Romanian texts the plural florile “the flowers” appears in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century and in the later 16th-century psalters at the same verse.^[11] A book of instruction of 1642, quoted in the DA, compares people to a short-lived flower: „Sânteți ca floarea câmpului și ca iarba carea o usucă soarele” “you are like the flower of the field and like the grass that the sun dries up”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

From the flower of a plant the word came to mean any plant grown for its flowers, a flower-shaped ornament or embroidery, and in the collective singular a mass of blossom: în floare “in bloom”, figuratively “in one's prime”, as in în floarea vârstei.^[13][10] A second line of senses names the top or best part of something: the elite, as in Eminescu's „toată floarea cea vestită a întregului Apus” “all the famed flower of the whole West”.^[10][2] Other transferred senses are technical: the mould that forms on wine or sour milk, flowers of sulphur, the bit of a key (floarea cheii), the face of printing type and the head of a nail.^[13][2] The Lexicon de la Buda of 1825 already gives the flower, the bit of a key and mould on bread or cheese.^[14]

The plural Florii names Palm Sunday, Duminica Floriilor.^[2][10] Ciorănescu takes it as a Romanian derivative, after Rosetti, while Candrea–Densusianu and the DA linked it to Latin Floralia through a popular form *florilia.^[2] In regional use the word names a ritual loaf baked in Maramureș on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, floare de grâu, and in Muntenia and the Republic of Moldova the bride's crown or garland.^[15][16][17] The word passed into Serbo-Croatian as florečika, the name of a kind of goby.^[2]

Timeline

• 1441 – first record, in a Slavonic document of the Romanian lands.^[10]
• early 16th century – florile “the flowers” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[11]
• 1642 – floarea câmpului “the flower of the field” in a book of instruction.^[12]
• 1649 – floare in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[18]
• 1688 – floare in the Bucharest Bible.^[19]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda gives the senses “flower”, “bit of a key” and “mould”.^[14]
• 1886 – Barcianu records floarea cheii “key bit” and floarea armatei “the pick of the army”.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. A flower: the part of a plant that holds its reproductive organs, usually with a bright corolla; in the singular also blossom in general: un cireș în floare “a cherry tree in bloom”.^[13][1]
2. Any herbaceous plant grown for its flowers: flori de câmp “wild flowers”.^[13][10]
3. A flower-shaped ornament, drawing or embroidery.^[13][2]
4. A film of mould forming on wine, sour milk and the like.^[13][2]
5. (chemistry) In floare de pucioasă or floare de sulf: flowers of sulphur, the powder obtained by sublimation.^[13][21]
6. The bit of a key that enters the lock (floarea cheii); the face of a piece of printing type; the flat head of a nail.^[13][2]
7. (figurative) The choicest part of something, the elite: floarea armatei “the pick of the army”.^[13][20]
8. (dated) Colour.^[13][2]
9. (rare, plural) Menstruation.^[2][20]

Word family

• florar
• florăreasă
• florărie
• florian
• floricică
• Florii
• înflori
• înfloritor
• înfloritură
• înflora

Related words

• floră
• Aromanian floare
• Latin flōs

Usage notes

Common set phrases: floare la ureche “a trifle, something easily done”, de florile mărului or de flori de cuc “in vain”, and copil din flori “an illegitimate child”.^[13] The proverb Cu o floare nu se face primăvară matches “one swallow does not make a summer”.^[10][12] Many plant names are compounds of the word, such as floarea-soarelui “sunflower” and floare-de-colț “edelweiss”.^[13]

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 m n o p q 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. floare
3. ^ a b Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 54
4. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3382
5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 86
7. ^ Saramandu, Nicolae (coord.) et al. (2010–), Dicționarul dialectului meglenoromân, general și etimologic, fascicles in Fonetică și dialectologie XXIX–, p. 170
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 128
9. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3390
10. ^ 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. floare
11. ^ 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 102:14
12. ^ a b c 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. floare
13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 400
14. ^ a b 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. 220
15. ^ Ștef, Dorin (2011), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din Maramureș, Baia Mare: Ethnologica, p. s.v. floare
16. ^ Marin, Maria; Mărgărit, Iulia, Glosar dialectal. Muntenia, București: Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”, p. s.v. floare
17. ^ Stati, Vasile (2003), Dicționar moldovenesc-românesc, Chișinău, p. s.v. floare
18. ^ 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. floare
19. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ieșirea 25:33
20. ^ a b c Barcianu, Sava Popovici (1886), Dicționar român-germân și germân-român, revised by D. P. Barcianu, part I: român-germân, Sibiu: Institut tipografic, p. 232
21. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 515