frige

Forms

frige (third-person singular present frige, simple perfect fripsei, past participle fript, third-person subjunctive frigă), 3rd conjugation^[1][2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin frīgō (“to roast, to fry”).^{[3][4][2][5][1][6]} De Vaan notes that Ancient Greek φρύγω (phrúgō, “to roast”) is very close in form and sense but cannot be matched by the sound laws, so the Latin verb may be a loan;^[7][1] Wiktionary gives a possible root Proto-Indo-European *bʰer-.^[7][1]

The verb survives in Aromanian frig and Megleno-Romanian frig, and Ciorănescu compares Albanian fërgoj.^[3][8][9] Romance cognates include Italian friggere, French frire, Catalan fregir, Spanish freír and Portuguese frigir.^[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is Coresi's Pravila of about 1560.^[5] MDA2 dates it from Dosoftei's lives of the saints, printed 1682–1686.^[4] The 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons use frigem to render a Slavonic phrase for roasting meat.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is cooking over an open fire, on a spit or grill, and by extension frying in a pan.^[2][5][4] From cooking came the senses “to burn, to scorch” and, in the old language, torture by fire or red-hot iron.^[4][3] Figuratively it is a sharp pain, physical or moral: a frige la inimă “to wound deeply”, and of tears „îi frig obrazul” “they burn her cheeks”.^[2][5] Intransitively it is said of anything that radiates heat, like the sun.^[2][4]

The colloquial reflexive a se frige “to get burnt” came to mean “to be cheated, to lose out in a deal”.^[2][5][3] The proverb cine s-a fript cu ciorbă suflă și în iaurt matches the English “once bitten, twice shy”.^[5] Derivatives include frigare “spit”, frigăruie “kebab”, friptură “roast” and friptoare “scorching heat”;^[3] Ciorănescu forms frigare with the suffix -are, while Pușcariu and Candrea–Densusianu reconstructed Latin bases for it.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1560 – Coresi's Pravila, the first record.^[5]
• c. 1660 – frigem in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[10]
• 1682-1686 – frige in Dosoftei's lives of the saints.^[4]
• 1688 – frigând, fripse and fript in the Bucharest Bible.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To roast or grill food over a fire; by extension to fry;^[2][4][1] frige-linte (colloquial) “a miser”.^[2][4][1]
2. (transitive, reflexive) To burn or be burnt by fire or something very hot;^[2][4] (figurative) to cause a sharp pain;^[2][4] a frige la inimă “to wound deeply”.^[2][4]
3. (intransitive, of hot things) To give off great heat, to scorch: Soarele frige la amiază. “The sun scorches at noon.”^[2][4]
4. (reflexive, figurative, colloquial) To be cheated, to lose out.^[2][5][3]

Word family

• frigare
• frigăruie
• friptoare
• fript
• friptură
• fripturist

Related words

• Aromanian frig

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 415
3. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. frige
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 944
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. frige
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3510
7. ^ 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
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 470
9. ^ 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, 87
10. ^ a b 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. frige
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Isaia 44:16