frâu

Forms

frâu n (plural frâie or frâne)^[1] Besides frâie the plural frâne is common in folk poetry: „Șaua ți s-a putrezit, Frânele s-au ruginit” “your saddle has rotted, your bridles have rusted”.^[2] DER records an old plural frână from the 16th century, and a rarer plural frâuri.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin frēnum (“bridle, bit, reins”).^{[3][4][5][6][2][1]} The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian frãn, with the forms fãrnu and frãnu, and Megleno-Romanian frǫn.^[3][7][8][9] Its Romance cognates include Italian freno, French frein, Catalan fre, Spanish freno and Portuguese freio, and Albanian fre is an early loan from the same Latin word.^[3][10][1]

The loss of the Latin /n/ is unexplained: Ciorănescu calls it unclear and compares brâu and grâu, which also keep an /n/ in the plural (⟨brâne⟩, ⟨grâne⟩).^[3][11] The Latin noun is traced to Proto-Indo-European *dʰer- (“to hold”), through a form meaning “holding”;^[1][12] Ernout and Meillet preferred a link with frendō (“to gnash”), “what the horse chews on”, which de Vaan finds possible but less straightforward.^[1][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Coresi's Psalter of 1570, in Psalm 31, in the line about holding the jaws with bit and bridle, „cu zăbale și cu frâu”.^[13][6] The Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573) and Coresi's Psalter of 1577 have the same line.^[13][2][4]

Semantic evolution

The word names the whole harness of the head, the headstall, the bit and the reins together, and in the plural often the reins alone.^[6][4] Its figurative use as a check or restraint goes back to the old texts and grew into a set of phrases: a ține în frâu “to keep in check”, a-și pune frâu limbii “to curb one's tongue”, a da frâu liber “to give free rein” and the adjective phrase fără frâu “unbridled”.^[6][2][5] The plural frâne took the figurative sense “the reins of government”, frânele legii “the reins of the law” in Vlahuță.^[14][5] In anatomy the frâul limbii is the fold that ties the tongue to the floor of the mouth.^[4]

From the plural frâne Romanian made the noun frână “brake”, with French frein as the model for the technical sense.^[3] In Muntenia the word also names the cross cut into the head of a slaughtered pig before it is split.^[15]

Timeline

• 1570 – frîu in Coresi's Psalter, Psalm 31.^[13]
• c. 1573 – the same line in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[13][2]
• 1577 – Coresi's second Psalter, the first record in MDA2.^[4]
• 1649 – glosses Slavonic узда in Mardarie's lexicon.^[16]
• 1688 – frâu and the plural frâne in the Bucharest Bible.^[17]
• c. 1743 – Neculce tells how a prince had the bridles taken off the boyars' horses.^[6]
• c. 1800–1812 – the plural frâne in Budai-Deleanu.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. bridle: the straps and the bit put on a horse's head and in its mouth to guide and control it.^[5][4][1]
2. (in the plural) the reins.^[4][1]
3. (figurative) a check or restraint: a ține pe cineva în frâu “to keep someone in check”, a da frâu liber “to let loose”, fără frâu “unbridled”.^[5][4]
4. (figurative, with the plural frâne) political leadership, the reins of power.^[5]
5. (anatomy) frâul limbii, the frenulum of the tongue.^[4]

Word family

• înfrâna
• neînfrânat
• înfrânător
• desfrâna
• frână

Related words

• Aromanian frãn
• Latin frēnum

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. frâu
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. frîu
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 941
5. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 413
6. ^ a b c d e 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. frâu
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 471
8. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 462
9. ^ Saramandu, Nicolae (coord.) et al. (2010–), Dicționarul dialectului meglenoromân, general și etimologic, fascicles in Fonetică și dialectologie XXIX–, p. 177
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3496
11. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. frîu
12. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ a b c d 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 31:12
14. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 334
15. ^ Marin, Maria; Mărgărit, Iulia, Glosar dialectal. Muntenia, București: Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”, p. 155
16. ^ 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. frîu
17. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ps 31:10