lăcustă

Forms

lăcustă f (plural lăcuste)^[1] DEX gives the variant locustă;^[2][3] Tiktin records Banat alăcustă and halăcustă.^[2][3] MDA2 lists the regional lacustă, lăcustră and lăcuștă.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *lacusta (“locust”), a form of locusta.^{[5][6][2][4][1]} Tiktin thinks the vowel was probably changed under the influence of lacus (“lake”), because locusts were believed to come from marshes.^[3] Ciorănescu cites Pușcariu, Densusianu, Candrea and Rosetti for the Latin form.^[5] It survives as Aromanian lăcustă.^[5][7][8] The Romance cognates include Italian locusta, Old French laouste, Catalan llagosta, Spanish langosta and Portuguese lagosta.^[5][6] Ungureanu finds that the Romanian form agrees more with Occitan than with Italian.^[9]

langustă “spiny lobster”, taken from French, goes back to the same Latin word.^[10][1] The origin of the Latin word is unclear; de Vaan compares lacerta (“lizard”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (c. 1500–1520), in the psalms on the plagues of Egypt, where the fruit of people's labours is given to the lăcuste (Psalms 77 and 104).^[12][4][13] Coresi's psalter of 1570 and the Psaltirea Scheiană have it in the same verses.^[13]

Semantic evolution

The word names the migratory locust and, more loosely, several other grasshoppers.^[2][4] Since swarms of locusts devour everything, it was applied to a glutton and, figuratively, to a parasite.^[5][12][14] Ciorănescu explains the sense “cigarette butt” by the shape of the stub, and the slang sense “kept woman” perhaps by the supposed greed of such women.^[5] The DA also records it as the name of a children's toy.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – lăcuste in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[4][13]
• 1546 – Lăcustă as a personal name.^[3]
• 1570 – in Coresi's psalter.^[13]
• 1649 – lăcuste in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon, glossing Slavonic words for locusts.^[15]
• 1688 – lăcusta in the Bucharest Bible (Joel 2:25).^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. locust, grasshopper: a name for several insects of the order Orthoptera, with long antennae and long hind legs for jumping, which damage crops; especially the migratory locust (Locusta migratoria).^[2][4][1]
2. (figurative) A glutton; a parasite who devours others' goods.^[5][12][14]
3. (colloquial) A cigarette butt.^[5]
4. (slang) A concubine.^[5]

Word family

• lăcustar
• lăcustoi

Related words

• langustă
• Aromanian lăcustă

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 580
3. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. lăcústă
4. ^ 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, 1319
5. ^ 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. lăcustă
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5098
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 618
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, 106
9. ^ Ungureanu, Dan (2024), Istoria limbii române, Chișinău: Cartier, p. 339
10. ^ Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 121
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b c d 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. lăcustă
13. ^ a b c d 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 104:33
14. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 732
15. ^ 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. lăcuste