măsură

Forms

măsură f (plural măsuri)^[1] MDA2 records an old plural măsure.^[2] In the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet the word was written мэсурэ.^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mēnsūra (“measuring, measure”).^{[3][2][4][5][1]} The Latin noun is formed on mētior (“to measure”) with -tūra.^[1][6]

The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian misură and Megleno-Romanian misur.^[3][7] Its Romance cognates include Italian misura, French mesure and Spanish mesura.^[3][8] Ciorănescu adds that Aromanian also has a homonym taken from Italian, which Papahagi glosses “plate”.^[3][7] The verb măsura may be a Romanian derivative or a direct continuation of mēnsūrō (“to measure”), as Candrea–Densusianu, Tiktin and the REW hold.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest Romanian record is in the Psaltirea Voroneț (c. 1551–1558), in the sense “measure, limit”: Psalm 146 says that God's understanding has no measure.^[9][4] MDA2 dates its first record to the Codicele Voronețean.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The word meant both the act of measuring and the value measured.^[10] In the old language it named the measuring itself: in 1798 surveyors were sent “to make a map and a measure” of an estate.^[10] Regional senses grew from this: a băga oile în măsură “to separate the ewes from the lambs to see how much milk each gives”, and in Transylvania “recruitment”.^[10][2]

Further senses are a unit of measure and the vessel that holds it, the bar and beat in music, the metre of a verse, and the limit of what is reasonable, hence “moderation”.^[11][3] The Lexicon de la Buda of 1825 already lists the measure of length and weight and “temperance” in food and drink.^[12] The sense “step taken to an end”, as in a lua măsuri “to take measures”, and the phrase a fi în măsură să “to be in a position to” belong to the modern language.^[4][11]

Timeline

• c. 1551–1558 – măsură “measure” in the Psaltirea Voroneț.^[9]
• c. 1563–1583 – the Codicele Voronețean, the first record in MDA2.^[2]
• 1649 – Mardarie's lexicon glosses Slavonic words for “measure” and “measureless” with măsură.^[13]
• 1798 – măsură “a survey of land” in a document.^[10]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda gives the senses “measure”, “weight” and “temperance”.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. The value of a quantity found by comparison with a unit, a measurement.^[11][1]
2. A unit of measure, and the vessel or instrument that represents it: instrument de măsură “measuring instrument”.^[11]
3. (music) A bar, the rhythmic unit of a piece.^[11][14]
4. (prosody) A metrical unit of a verse.^[11][14]
5. (figurative) The natural limit of something, moderation.^[11][15]
6. (figurative) A step taken to achieve an end: guvernul a luat măsuri “the government took measures”.^[11][14]

Word family

• măsura
• măsurătoare
• măsurător
• măsurătură
• măsuriș

Related words

• Aromanian misură
• Latin mēnsūra

Usage notes

Many phrases use the word: în mare măsură “to a great extent”, pe măsură ce “as, in proportion as”, după măsură “made to measure”, peste măsură “excessively”.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 1461
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. măsură
4. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. măsură
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5502
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 691
8. ^ Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 160
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 146:5
10. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. măsură
11. ^ 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. 630
12. ^ a b 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. 388
13. ^ 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. măsură
14. ^ a b c Breban, Vasile (1980), Dicționar al limbii române contemporane de uz curent, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 341
15. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. măsură