furcă

Forms

furcă f (plural furci)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin furca (“fork”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} It survives in all four branches: Aromanian furcã, Megleno-Romanian furcă and Istro-Romanian furke.^[2][1][6][7] Its Romance cognates include Italian forca, French fourche, Catalan forca, Spanish horca and Portuguese forca.^[2][8] Albanian furkë is the same word;^[9][10][1] Ciorănescu notes that it could come from Romanian.^[2] The origin of the Latin word is uncertain.^[9][10][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1469, in the Slavonic documents.^[3] MDA2 first cites it from the Moldavian law code of Vasile Lupu's time.^[4] Dosoftei uses it for the gallows: „Te voi spânzura într-o furcă” “I will hang you on a gallows”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

From the farm tool for hay and dung the word passed to many forked or upright objects: a post holding the well sweep, a pillar of a timber house, the parts of a loom and of a cart, a fork in a road or a stream, the bottom of the breastbone (furca pieptului).^{[5][3][11][2]} A forked post was also the gallows, as in the Romance languages, where the REW records the same sense; the curse du-te-n furci! “go hang!” keeps it.^[3][8] Another sense is the distaff on which the tow is tied for spinning; from the spinning evenings Moldavian has furcărie, a women's spinning bee.^[3][2] Tiktin compares a da de furcă “to give someone a hard nut to crack” with French and Italian idioms about thread to spin.^[3] The telephone cradle, furca telefonului, is a modern use.^[11]

Candrea–Densusianu and the DA derive the derivative furcătură “fork, bifurcation” from Vulgar Latin *furcatura;^[12] Ciorănescu takes it as a Romanian formation and suggests Vulgar Latin *furcilla for furcea.^[2]

Timeline

• 1469 – the first record in Tiktin.^[3]
• 1825 – the Lexicon of Buda lists the pitchfork, the press beam and the distaff.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. A pitchfork: a wooden or steel pole ending in two or three prongs, used to gather hay and dung; also a forkful.^[11][1]
2. A forked or upright part of various things: furca telefonului the telephone cradle, furca pieptului the lower end of the breastbone, furca puțului the post of a well sweep, furca drumului a fork in the road.^[11]
3. (dated) A gallows shaped like a two-pronged fork.^[11][3]
4. A distaff, the rod on which wool or flax is tied for spinning.^[11][1]

Word family

• furcătură
• furcea
• furcoi
• furculiță
• înfurca
• furcuță

Related words

• bifurca
• Aromanian furcã

Usage notes

A avea de furcă cu cineva means “to have a hard time with someone”, a da cuiva de furcă “to give someone a lot of trouble”, and a se certa furcă “to quarrel fiercely”.^[11][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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. furcă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. furcă
4. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 954
5. ^ a b 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. furcă
6. ^ Saramandu, Nicolae (coord.) et al. (2010–), Dicționarul dialectului meglenoromân, general și etimologic, fascicles in Fonetică și dialectologie XXIX–, p. 184
7. ^ Byhan, Arthur (1899), Istrorumänisches Glossar, Sechster Jahresbericht des Instituts für rumänische Sprache zu Leipzig: 174–366, p. 221
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3593
9. ^ 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
10. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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. 420
12. ^ 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. 230