gard

Forms

gard n (plural garduri)^[1]

Etymology

Ciorănescu and MDA2 take it as borrowed from Old Church Slavonic градъ (gradŭ, “wall; enclosed garden”), comparing Albanian gardh (“fence, hedge”).^[2][3] DEX names both words as comparisons only.^[4] The Slavonic word continues Proto-Slavic *gordъ (“fortification, town”), whose meanings in Old Church Slavonic include “wall” and “garden”.^[5]

The vowel order is the difficulty: as with baltă and daltă, the Romanian form has /ar/ where Old Church Slavonic has /ra/.^[2] One explanation puts the loan before the Slavic metathesis of liquids, from the Proto-Slavic form itself, which still had the vowel before the liquid.^[2][1] Wiktionary notes against this that grădină, ogradă and îngrădi were borrowed with the metathesis already made.^[1] Ciorănescu still holds the Slavic source, stressing that the sense matches exactly.^[2] Philippide and the Academy dictionary prefer a direct loan from Albanian, Rosetti rejects the Slavic source, and Wiktionary also mentions a substrate word related to the Albanian one.^[2][1] Scriban derived it from the Gothic word for “court, house”, a Germanic link that Ciorănescu finds unlikely.^[6][2] The Albanian word comes from Proto-Indo-European *gʰordʰ-o- (“fence”).^[7]

It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian gardu and Megleno-Romanian gard.^{[2][8][9][10]}

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1488, from the Romanian words in Slavonic–Romanian documents.^[11] In Romanian texts the genitive gardului appears first in the Psaltirea Voronețeană (c. 1551–1558), Psalm 143:17, and Coresi's psalter of 1570 has gard at Psalm 61:3.^[12][13] MDA2 cites Coresi's psalter of 1577 as its first record.^[3] The sense is “fence, enclosure”.^[14][3]

Semantic evolution

The DA defines the word as the general name for what separates one property from another or encloses a yard or a cattle pen, most often made of wattle woven round stakes, but also of thorns, stones, boards or poles.^[14] The wattle itself is called gard: Tiktin quotes houses with walls of wattle plastered with earth.^[11] In fishing it is a weir of twigs or reeds across a stream, and in sport a hurdle;^[4][11] Tiktin records alergare de garduri “hurdle race”.^[4][11] Ciorănescu notes a rare Transylvanian sense “garden, orchard”, and the Oltenian glossary has “yard”.^[2][15] In Moldova it is also a net set between two fish traps.^[16]

The fence gives many idioms: copil de după gard “child born out of wedlock”, a lega pe cineva la gard “to fool someone”, a lega cartea de gard “to give up learning”.^[3][11][4] Scriban explains the last by old schoolboys who hung their satchels on the school fence when they left school.^[6] Ciorănescu reports that Serbo-Croatian garda and a Ruthenian word for “dam, weir” come from Romanian.^[2]

Timeline

• 1488 – first record, in a Slavonic–Romanian document.^[11]
• c. 1551–1558 – gardului in the Psaltirea Voronețeană.^[12]
• 1570 – gard in Coresi's psalter.^[13]
• 1649 – Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon uses gard to render Slavonic words for “fence” and “wattle”.^[17]
• 1688 – seventeen occurrences in the Bucharest Bible.^[18]
• 1825 – the Buda Lexicon glosses gardu with Latin “sepes”.^[19]
• 1877 – gard “wattle” as a building material in an official gazette quoted by Tiktin.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fence of wood, metal, masonry, woven twigs or other material that encloses a yard, a plot or a garden;^[4][3][1] gard viu a hedge.^[4][3][1]
2. A screen of woven twigs or reeds set across a stream to catch fish.^[4]
3. (sports) A hurdle in some running events; in the plural, the hurdles race.^[4]
4. (regional) A garden or orchard; a yard.^[2][15]

Word family

• gardagiu
• gărdui

Related words

• grădină
• ogradă
• îngrădi
• Aromanian gardu
• Albanian gardh

Usage notes

Common idioms include a da cu oiștea-n gard “to make a blunder” and a sări peste garduri “to have love affairs”.^[4] The plural is garduri.^[4][1]

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 g h i j 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. gard
3. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 964
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 426
5. ^ Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 178
6. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 541
7. ^ Demiraj, Bardhyl (1997), Albanische Etymologien: Untersuchungen zum albanischen Erbwortschatz, Amsterdam / Atlanta: Rodopi (Leiden Studies in Indo-European 7), p. 175
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 486
9. ^ Saramandu, Nicolae (coord.) et al. (2010–), Dicționarul dialectului meglenoromân, general și etimologic, fascicles in Fonetică și dialectologie XXIX–, p. 188
10. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 136
11. ^ 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. gard
12. ^ 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 143:17
13. ^ 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 61:3
14. ^ 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. gard
15. ^ a b Cazacu, Boris (coord.) et al. (1967), Glosar dialectal. Oltenia, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. 41
16. ^ Stati, Vasile (2003), Dicționar moldovenesc-românesc, Chișinău, p. 110
17. ^ 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. gard
18. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gen 38:29
19. ^ 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. 235