limbut

Forms

limbut m or n (feminine singular limbută, masculine plural limbuți, feminine/neuter plural limbute)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *linguūtus (“full of tongue, talkative”), formed on lingua (“tongue”), with its sounds shaped by limbă “tongue”.^{[2][3][4][5][6][1]} Its Romance cognates include Sardinian limbudu, Occitan lengut and Catalan llengut, with forms in the dialects of southern Italy.^[6][5][1] Ciorănescu lists it among the noun's derivatives, from Romanian limbă + -ut, the participial suffix of tăcut and cornut, beside the Latin source given by Pușcariu, Candrea and Densusianu, and the REW.^[7] He compares Albanian ljingut (“gluttonous”), which he thinks comes from Italian.^[7] Scriban also derives it from the noun.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, at Psalm 139:12, a verse every 16th-century psalter repeats.^[9] Tiktin reads the word in the Psaltirea Scheiană at that verse in an old sense “foreign, heathen”, from limbă in the sense “people, nation”.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The usual sense, “talkative, garrulous”, is in the Bucharest Bible of 1688, where Proverbs 21:19 renders Ancient Greek γλωσσώδης (glōssṓdēs): „Mai bine e a lăcui în pământ pustiu decât cu muiere sfadnică și limbută” “it is better to dwell in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and talkative woman”.^[5][10] A 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicon uses limbutul for a Slavonic word meaning “grandiloquent”.^[11] Into the 19th century it could also mean “eloquent”, without blame: a text of 1802 calls Mark Antony limbut, glossed “or well-spoken”, and Negruzzi speaks of Thucydides and Xenophon as famous, limbuți authors.^[3][12] In Muntenia, Oltenia and the Banat it means “lisping” or “stammering”.^[5][4]

Derivatives include the noun limbuție “chatter”, the verb limbuți “to chatter”, recorded in the Anonymus Caransebesiensis and the Bible of 1688, and the diminutives limbuțel and limbuțică.^[6][5][7]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – limbut in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (Psalm 139:12), the first record.^[9]
• c. 1650–1700 – limbut in the Anonymus Caransebesiensis.^[4]
• 1660 – limbutul in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[11]
• 1688 – limbută “talkative” of a woman in the Bucharest Bible.^[10]
• 1802 – limbut “eloquent” of Mark Antony.^[3][5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. talkative, garrulous: of a person who talks much and idly.^[2][4][1]
2. (dated) Eloquent.^[4][12]
3. (regional) Lisping; stammering.^[4][5]

Noun

1. A chatterbox.^[2][1]

Word family

• limbuție
• limbuți

Related words

• limbă

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 591
3. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. limbut
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, 1368
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. limbut
6. ^ a b c Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. limbut
7. ^ a b c 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
8. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 747
9. ^ 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 139:12
10. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Proverbs 21:19
11. ^ a b 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. limbutul
12. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 760