gorilă

Forms

gorilă f (plural gorile)^[1] Vlahuță's Dan (1894) has the masculine goril: „un fel de goril” “a kind of gorilla”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French gorille, as DEX and DILF give it, comparing Italian gorilla and German Gorilla;^[4][5][3] MDA2 gives all three as sources.^[4][5][3] The sense “bodyguard” is a loan of the American English gorilla.^[6]

The French word (1854) is the adapted form of the scientific name gorilla, given to the ape in 1847 after Ancient Greek Γόριλλαι (Górillai), the hairy people that the Greek version of the voyage of the Carthaginian Hanno met on the coast of Africa.^[7][1] The Greek name is probably Punic, perhaps from an African word.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Vlahuță's novel Dan (1894), where a fat tenant farmer is compared to a gorilla.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

Beside the name of the ape, the word has been used since the 1980s for a bodyguard, a sense Dimitrescu records in the press from 1982.^[8][6] The slang dictionary marks it as pejorative.^[9] The French word had the same development, taken from American English.^[7]

Timeline

• 1894 – goril in Vlahuță's Dan, the first record.^[3][2]
• 1982 – gorile “bodyguards” in România literară.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. gorilla: the largest of the anthropoid apes, which lives in the forests of equatorial Africa (Gorilla gorilla).^[4][3]
2. (colloquial, pejorative) A bodyguard.^[6][9][8]

Related words

• French gorille

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. gorilă
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, 1012
4. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 445
5. ^ a b Costăchescu, Adriana; Dincă, Daniela; Dragoste, Ramona; Popescu, Mihaela; Scurtu, Gabriela (2009–2010), Dicționar de împrumuturi lexicale din limba franceză (DILF), 2 vols., Craiova: Universitaria, p. s.v. gorilă
6. ^ a b c Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. gorilă
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. gorille
8. ^ a b c Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. gorilă
9. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. gorilă