gură

Forms

gură f (plural guri)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin gula (“throat, gullet”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} It survives in all four branches: Aromanian gurã, Megleno-Romanian gură and Istro-Romanian gurę.^[2][6][7] Its Romance cognates include Italian gola, French gueule, Catalan gola, Spanish gola and Portuguese gola.^[2][5]

The Latin word meant the throat; the sense “mouth” is the Romanian one, but it is also found in Albanian, in Modern Greek and in French and Occitan dialects.^[8][5] Ciorănescu notes that most of the word's senses coincide with those of Latin bucca (“cheek, mouth”), which gave the word for mouth in the other Romance languages.^[2] He reads Medieval Latin gula Augusti “the first of August” with the sense “entrance” of the Latin word.^[2] De Vaan finds the traditional Indo-European etymology of the Latin word unworkable, and compares Old Church Slavonic глътати (glŭtati, “to swallow”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's earliest date is 1306, a name record taken from Drăganu's study of medieval place and personal names.^[10] In the 16th-century psalters the word appears once, in the Psaltirea Voronețeană (Psalm 134:16).^[11] MDA2's first record is the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583).^[3]

Semantic evolution

From the mouth as a body part the word took the senses of a mouthful or a sip, of a family member who must be fed, and of a kiss.^[4] As the organ of speech it came to mean what someone says, the voice, shouting and quarrelling, and a person who speaks.^[4] An old synonym was rost, the usual word for the mouth in the old texts.^[3][12] Transferred to things, gură is any opening through which something enters or leaves: the neck of a vessel, the mouth of a river, the opening of a shirt, a mountain pass.^[4][2] Ciorănescu lists more technical senses, such as the start of the cloth on the loom and a blade's edge.^[2]

A dialect word of Bulgaria, Bulgarian гура (gura), a name of the snapdragon, was borrowed from Romanian gură.^[13] Among the derivatives, guraliv “talkative” has a debated suffix: Ciorănescu explains it by the suffix -liu;^[2] Pușcariu and the DA see a crossing with Bulgarian говорлив (govorliv, “talkative”), and Graur adds мълчалив (mălčaliv, “taciturn”) to account for the a.^[2]

Timeline

• 1306 – a name record from Drăganu's study of medieval names, Tiktin's earliest date.^[10]
• c. 1551–1558 – gură in the Psaltirea Voronețeană.^[11]
• c. 1563–1583 – gură in the Codicele Voronețean.^[3]
• 1649 – gură glosses Slavonic Chrysostom and “tongue” in Mardarie's lexicon.^[14]
• 1688 – gurii and gurile are frequent in the Bucharest Bible.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. The mouth of people and animals, through which food enters the body; the lips and the opening between them.^[4][3][1]
2. A kiss.^[4]
3. A mouthful, bite or sip; a mouth to feed, a member of a family.^[4][1]
4. The mouth as the organ of speech; what someone says, the voice; noise, shouting, quarrelling; a speaker.^[4]
5. The mouth as the organ of singing.^[4]
6. An opening through which something enters, leaves or flows: the mouth of a vessel or a river, the neck of a shirt, a sewer opening.^[4][2]

Word family

• guriță
• guraliv
• guraliu
• guri
• guritor
• gurar
• gureș

Related words

• rost
• Latin gula

Usage notes

Many expressions use the word: cu sufletul la gură “out of breath; at death's door” and a se duce pe gura lupului “to vanish”.^[4] Compounds include gură-cască “idler, gawker” and gură-spartă “blabbermouth”;^[4] gură de foc is a firearm, gură de incendiu a fire hydrant.^[4] The old plural was gure.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. gură
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, 1031
4. ^ 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. 454
5. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3910
6. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 507
7. ^ Kovačec, August (1998), Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik (s gramatikom i tekstovima), Pula
8. ^ 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. gură
9. ^ 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 Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. gură
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 134:16
12. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. rost
13. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 1, 295
14. ^ 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. gură
15. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gn 42:27