juca

Forms

juca (third-person singular present joacă, past participle jucat, third-person subjunctive joace); first conjugation^[1] Moldavian speech has giuca, the form Aromanian shares.^[2][3] In the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet the word was written жука.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *iocāre (“to play”), the active form spoken Latin used instead of the classical deponent Latin iocārī (“to jest, joke”).^{[2][4][5][3][6][1]} The Latin verb is formed on iocus (“joke, jest”).^[7][1]

The verb survives in all four branches: Aromanian giucare, Megleno-Romanian jucari and Istro-Romanian joc.^[2][8][9] It is found in all the Romance languages: Italian giocare, French jouer, Occitan jogar, Spanish jugar and Portuguese jogar.^[2][6][10]

The DLR finds the senses “to play a game” and “to act” in the other Romance languages too.^[11] For the sense “to dance”, Pușcariu, the Academy dictionary and the DLR explain it as a calque on Old Church Slavonic играти (igrati, “to play; to dance”).^[2][11] Ciorănescu thinks it may also have grown inside Romanian from the sense “to move, to stir”, comparing Italian ballare, which means both “to move” and “to dance”.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Coresi's Psalter of 1570, where jucară renders the leaping of the mountains in Psalm 113:4.^[12] Tiktin's first record is the same verse in the Psaltirea Scheiană, and MDA2 cites Coresi's Carte de învățătură of 1581.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

Latin iocari meant “to jest”, and Romanian kept that sense in “to joke, to mock, not to take seriously”.^[7][11][4] The other Romance languages and Romanian share the senses “to play a game” and “to act a part”.^[11] The verb also came to mean “to move, to stir”: water and eyes are said to “play”.^[11][13] From the moving of loose parts comes the technical sense “to have play, not to sit firmly”.^[4][2] Other senses are “to gamble”, “to deceive, to trick someone” and “to play a piece of music”.^[11][2][1] Modern dictionaries add “to take part in a sports match”.^[4]

Timeline

• 1570 – jucară “they leapt” and joc in Coresi's Psalter.^[12][14]
• c. 1573–1578 – in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[3]
• 1581 – in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. (reflexive) to play, to amuse oneself with games or toys.^[4][1]
2. (reflexive, figurative) to trifle with, not to take someone or something seriously; to joke.^[4]
3. (intransitive) to play games of chance or parlour games; to gamble.^[4][1]
4. (intransitive) to take part as a player in a sports competition.^[4]
5. (popular) to dance.^[4][1]
6. (figurative, of things seen moving) to move, to flicker, to seem to move.^[4]
7. (intransitive) to perform a part in a play or film, (of a theatre company) to give a performance.^[4]
8. (intransitive) not to sit firmly, (of machine parts) to have play, to move within a small space.^[4][2]

Word family

• jucător
• jucăuș
• jucărie
• jucărier
• jucătorie
• joacă

Related words

• joc
• Aromanian giucare
• Latin iocus

Usage notes

A se juca cu focul means “to play with fire”, to treat something dangerous lightly.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. juca
3. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. juca
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. 567
5. ^ 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, 1288
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4585
7. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. iocor
8. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 92
9. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. juca
10. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. giocare
11. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. juca
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 113:4
13. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 350
14. ^ 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 103:28