lacrimă

Forms

lacrimă f (plural lacrimi)^[1] The old texts write lacrămă, with the plural lacrăme or lacrămi: the Codicele Voronețean has „cu multe lacrămi” “with many tears”.^[2][3] Lacrămă is still a popular variant;^[4][5] MDA2 also records lacramă, lacremă and lăcrămă.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin lacrima (“tear”), through the older Romanian form lacrămă.^{[6][5][4][1][7]} Old Latin also had the spellings ⟨lacruma⟩ and ⟨dacrima⟩.^[8][1] The OLD takes the Latin word as probably borrowed from Ancient Greek δάκρυμα (dákruma); de Vaan reports this view and the objection that the Greek form is itself late and rare, and Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Indo-European *dáḱru-.^[9][8][1]

It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian lacrimã and Megleno-Romanian lacrimă.^{[6][10][11][12]} Its Romance cognates include Italian lagrima, French larme, Occitan lagrema, Spanish lágrima and Portuguese lágrima.^[6][7] The verb lăcrima is a Romanian derivative for Ciorănescu, while Pușcariu, Candrea and Densusianu and the DA take it straight from Latin lacrimō.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 dates the first record to the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century.^[5] The other 16th-century texts have the form lacrămă: the Psaltirea Scheiană writes „Izbăvit-ai ochii mei de lacrămi” “thou hast delivered my eyes from tears”.^[2] The sense is the same as today, the drops shed in weeping.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Besides the drop itself, the plural came to mean weeping, mourning and lament;^[2][5] cu lacrimi in prayers and pleas meant “earnestly, in great distress”.^[2][5] Hyperbolic phrases such as a vărsa lacrimi de sânge “to weep tears of blood” stress great grief, and lacrimi de crocodil are feigned tears.^[5][4] Because tears are clear, the word serves in comparisons such as limpede ca lacrima “crystal-clear”.^[2][3] Figuratively it is a drop of any liquid.^[4]

In Maramureș lacrimă also means “complaint, petition”, and the derivative lăcrămație “complaint”;^[6][13] Ciorănescu explains this by confusion with reclama and reclamație.^[6][13] In thieves' slang it is a naive person, an easy victim.^[14] The diminutive lăcrimioară also names the lily of the valley.^[6][7]

Timeline

• early 16th century – lacrimă in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[5]
• 1573 – lacrămă in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[15]
• 1581 – lacrămele in Coresi's Evanghelie cu învățătură.^[2]
• 1664 – lacrămă in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[16]
• 1688 – „Cu lacrămile mele așternutul mieu voiu uda” “I water my couch with my tears” in the Bucharest Bible.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A tear: the clear salty fluid of the lacrimal glands that moistens the eyes and flows out in pain or emotion.^[4][5]
2. (figurative) A drop.^[4]
3. (in the plural) weeping;^[4] în lacrimi “in tears”, până la lacrimi “to the point of tears”.^[4]
4. (regional, Maramureș) A complaint, a petition.^[13]
5. (slang) A gullible person, an easy mark.^[14]

Word family

• lăcrima
• lăcrimioară
• lăcrimos
• înlăcrima
• înlăcrimat
• lăcrimiță

Related words

• lacrimal
• lacrimogen
• Aromanian lacrimã
• Latin lacrima

Usage notes

A râde cu lacrimi means “to laugh till one cries”.^[5] The neologisms lacrimal and lacrimogen belong to the same Latin family.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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. lacrimă
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. lacrimă
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 574
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1303
6. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. lacrimă
7. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4824
8. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ 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, 105
11. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 572
12. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 163
13. ^ a b c Ștef, Dorin (2021), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din județul Maramureș, 3rd ed., Baia Mare, p. s.v. lacrimă
14. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. lacrimă
15. ^ 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 79:6
16. ^ 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. lacrămă