gras

Forms

gras m or n (feminine singular grasă, masculine plural grași, feminine/neuter plural grase)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin grassus (“fat”), a popular form of crassus (“thick, fat”).^[2][1][3][4] Candrea and Densusianu and DA explain the initial /g/ by the influence of grossus (“thick”).^[5][6] De Vaan finds no convincing etymology for the Latin adjective, which belongs to a group of words for bodily shapes with a double consonant.^[7]

Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian have gras and gras.^[2][8] The Romance cognates include Italian grasso, Occitan gras, French gras, Spanish graso and Portuguese graxo.^[2][5] The adjective cras is its doublet.^[6][1]

Pușcariu, Candrea and Densusianu and DA take îngrășa “to fatten” from a Latin *ingrassiō, as Papahagi does for ngrașu;^[9] Ciorănescu prefers a Romanian derivative.^[2][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the place name Grașii in a document of 1455.^[10] In Romanian texts the adjective and the plural grașii appear in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, of the early 16th century.^[11][12] MDA2 dates its first record to Coresi's Psalter of 1577.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The old language used the neuter as a noun, “fat”: Coresi's Psalter has „grasul mieilor … cu grasul grâului” “the fat of lambs … with the fat of the wheat”.^[10][13] The Psaltirea Scheiană's „toți grașii pământeni” are “all the rich of the earth”, and the sense “rich, well-off” lives on in the idiom gras la ceafă and in slang.^[13][3][14] Of land the adjective means “fertile”, as in an agricultural calendar of 1733.^[10] Later uses include acid gras “fatty acid”, litere grase “bold type” and Grasă de Cotnari, a grape variety and its wine.^[15]

Derivatives include grăsime “fat”, grăscean, grăsuț and grăsuliu “plump” and grăsun “sucking pig”, which Candrea and Densusianu and DA take from a Latin derivative and Ciorănescu forms with the suffix -un.^[2]

Timeline

• 1455 – the place name Grașii, the first record.^[10]
• early 16th century – gras and grașii in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[11]
• 1577 – gras in Coresi's Psalter, and the noun grasul “the fat”.^[3][10]
• 1661 – hrănit și gras “fed and fattened”, of a calf, in a manuscript.^[10]
• 1733 – loc gras “fertile ground” in a calendar.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. fat, plump, having a thick layer of fat under the skin;^[15][3] țesut gras is adipose tissue.^[15][3]
2. (figurative, colloquial) Of sums of money or profits, large.^[15]
3. Containing much fat; fatty, cooked with much fat.^[15]
4. In acid gras: a fatty acid.^[15]
5. Of fruit, fleshy; of grass, thick and full of sap.^[15]
6. Of soil, fertile.^[15]
7. (typography) bold, of type thicker than the usual.^[15]

Noun

1. In Grasă de Cotnari: a variety of grapevine and the white wine made from it.^[15]

Word family

• grăsime
• grăscean
• grăsuț
• grăsuliu
• grăsun
• îngrășa

Related words

• cras
• Aromanian gras
• Latin crassus

Usage notes

The ironic gras ca scripca means “very thin”.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. gras
3. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1016
4. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2299
5. ^ a b Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București
6. ^ 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. gras
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. crassus
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 143
9. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 752
10. ^ 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. gras
11. ^ 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 62:6
12. ^ 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 21:32
13. ^ a b Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. s.v. gras
14. ^ Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. gras
15. ^ 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. 447