limbă

Forms

limbă f (plural limbi)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin lingua (“tongue, language”).^{[2][3][4][1][5][6]} The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian limbã, Megleno-Romanian limbă and Istro-Romanian limbę.^[2][7][8] Its Romance cognates include Italian lingua, Sardinian limba, French langue, Occitan lenga and Spanish lengua.^[2][6]

Latin /ɡʷ/ became /b/ here, a change Sardinian shares.^[1] Ciorănescu thinks that a popular Latin variant with /b/ may have existed already, given the Sardinian form, either through a crossing with lambō (“to lick”) or spontaneously, as in negură from nebula (“mist”).^[2]

The Latin word comes from older dingua, from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (“tongue”); its /l/ is explained by association with lingō (“to lick”).^[9][1] Its cognates include German Zunge.^[1][9]

The old sense “people, nation, the heathen” is a calque of Old Church Slavonic ѩзꙑкъ (językŭ), which meant both “language” and “people”.^[3][10][11] Ciorănescu accepts this, after Șăineanu and Rosetti, but notes that the sense also exists in old Italian.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is of 1433, in a Slavonic–Romanian document.^[12] A name Limbadulcescu is recorded in 1436.^[13] In Romanian texts MDA2's first record is the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, written in the early 16th century.^[4] In the psalters the plural limbile renders “the nations, the heathen”, and the singular also means the tongue: „limba mea lepi-se de grumadzul mieu” “my tongue cleaves to my throat”.^[14][15][3]

Semantic evolution

From the organ the word passed to speech and to a language, senses that Latin already had.^[3][2] The sense “nation” was common in the old religious texts and survives in some regions.^[2][15][16] In the 17th century the phrase a prinde limbă meant “to get news, to catch an informant”.^[2][3] Cu limbă de moarte “by last will” appears in a document of 1757.^[12]

Objects shaped like a tongue took the name: the clapper of a bell, the hand of a clock, the needle of a balance, a shoehorn, the blade of a knife, a strip of land.^[2][17][3] In slang the word means an informer.^[18] limbaj “language, speech” was formed on the model of French langage.^[2]

Ciorănescu derives limbut “talkative” in Romanian, with the suffix of participles such as tăcut, while Pușcariu, Candrea–Densusianu and the REW take it from Latin *linguūtus.^[2] The word passed into neighbouring languages: Bulgarian лимба (limba) as a plant name, Hungarian limba, and Serbo-Croatian limba (“jaw”).^[2][1]

Timeline

• 1433 – first record, in a Slavonic–Romanian document.^[12]
• 1436 – the name Limbadulcescu.^[13]
• c. 1500–1520 – in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, with limbile “the nations”.^[4][14]
• 17th century – a prinde limbă “to get news”.^[2]
• 1688 – limbile occurs more than 300 times in the Bucharest Bible.^[19]
• 1757 – cu limbă de moarte “by last will”.^[12]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda gives the organ and the language.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. The tongue: the movable muscular organ in the mouth, used for taste, chewing and swallowing, and in humans for speech.^[21][1][4]
2. A language: the means of communication of a community, with its grammar and vocabulary; a person's or a writer's way of speaking: Vorbește trei limbi. “She speaks three languages.”^[21][1][22]
3. Speech, word;^[12][21] cu limbă de moarte “as one's last wish”.^[12][21]
4. (old) A people, a nation.^[2][3]
5. Something shaped like a tongue: the clapper of a bell, the hand of a clock, the needle of a balance, a shoehorn, the blade of a knife, a narrow strip of land.^[2][17]
6. (slang) An informer.^[18]

Word family

• limbareț
• limbariță
• limbut
• limbuție
• limbuți
• limbistică

Related words

• Aromanian limbã
• Latin lingua

Usage notes

Common idioms include a alerga cu limba scoasă “to chase desperately after something” and a avea limbă lungă “to talk too much”.^[21] The plural is limbi, rarely limbe.^[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 j k l m n o 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. limbă
3. ^ 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. limbă
4. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1366
5. ^ Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 83
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5067
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 629
8. ^ Kovačec, August (1998), Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik (s gramatikom i tekstovima), Pula
9. ^ 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
10. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. 984
11. ^ Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 159
12. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. limbă
13. ^ a b Constantinescu, N. A. (1963), Dicționar onomastic romînesc, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. s.v. limbă
14. ^ 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 2:1
15. ^ a b Candrea, I.-A. (1916), Psaltirea Scheiană comparată cu celelalte psaltiri din sec. XVI și XVII traduse din slavonește, vol. II: Glosarele, București: Socec, p. 328
16. ^ Marin, Maria; Mărgărit, Iulia, Glosar dialectal. Muntenia, București: Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”, p. 235
17. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 746
18. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. limbă
19. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gen 10:5
20. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 352
21. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 591
22. ^ Academia Republicii Populare Romîne (1958), Dicționarul limbii romîne moderne, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1, 457