mătase

Forms

mătase f (plural mătăsuri)^[1] In Moldavia and in old texts the word ends in -ă: Varlaam asks who would give his eyes „pentru veșmente de mătasă” “for silken garments”.^[2][3] Besides the plural mătăsuri, older and regional texts have mătăsi: „Florile de fir, mătăsi și catifea” “the flowers of gold thread, silks and velvet” (Donici).^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin metaxa (“raw silk, thread”), also spelled mataxa.^{[6][5][7][2][1]} Latin took it from Ancient Greek μέταξα (métaxa, “raw silk”), a word of unknown origin;^[6][1] the spelling with ⟨a⟩, “rough thread, tow”, is recorded in Lucilius and Vitruvius.^[8] The final ⟨-e⟩, where a Latin noun in ⟨-a⟩ would give ⟨-ă⟩, is unusual: Tiktin compares Modern Greek μετάξι (metáxi),^[4] and the TESz suggests that the Romanian word came directly from a Byzantine Greek plural.^[9]

The western Romance languages kept the Latin word with another sense, “skein, hank”: Italian matassa, Occitan madaisa, Spanish madeja and Portuguese madeixa.^[6][10] Romanian shares the sense “silk” with Modern Greek and Albanian mëndafsh.^[6][1][11] Ciorănescu lists Aromanian mãtasi and Megleno-Romanian mătăși beside the Romanian word,^[6][12] but Papahagi, Pascu and Capidan derive these from the Modern Greek word.^[13][14][15]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is a personal name, Mătasă, in 1428.^[4] As a common noun “silk” it appears in a document of 1588 listing five silk sashes with tassels, brâie de matase cu canafi.^[5][2]

Semantic evolution

The word first named the thread spun from silkworm cocoons and the cloth woven from it; the plural mătăsuri names kinds of silk cloth or silk garments.^[7][6] A document of 1705 speaks of the mulberry on which the worms that make silk are fed.^[2] In the 20th century it came to cover fibres made from cellulose and synthetic fibres: Scriban already has mătase artificială.^[3][7]

By likeness it names the tuft of fine threads at the tip of an ear of maize.^[4][7] Plant names include mătasea-broaștei “filamentous green algae” and mătasea-bradului, a tree lichen; regionally mătasea morților is gossamer.^[7][5] Hungarian borrowed the word from Romanian as matász, recorded from 1599, now obsolete in Transylvania but alive among the Csángós of Moldavia.^[9][6]

Timeline

• 1428 – the personal name Mătasă.^[4]
• 1588 – matase “silk” in a document, the first record of the common noun.^[5][2]
• 1599 – Hungarian matász, borrowed from Romanian, first recorded.^[9]
• 1649 – mătase in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[16]
• 1688 – mătase 27 times in the Bucharest Bible, first in Exodus 25:4.^[17]
• 1705 – the silkworm described as feeding on mulberry leaves.^[2]
• 1831 – the plural mătăsuri.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. silk: the fibre made from silkworm cocoons; also a vegetable or synthetic fibre with similar qualities.^[7][5][1]
2. A fine, light fabric woven from such fibres; in the plural, kinds of silk cloth.^[7][18]
3. Silk thread.^[7][5]
4. (botany) The tuft of thin yellowish-brown threads at the tip of an ear of maize, corn silk.^[7][5]

Word family

• mătăsar
• mătăsărie
• mătăsică
• mătăsos

Related words

• Aromanian mãtasi
• Latin metaxa

Usage notes

De mătase means “silky, soft and glossy”, and crescut în mătase “brought up in luxury, pampered”.^[7][5]

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 (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. mătase
3. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 790
4. ^ 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. mătase
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1462
6. ^ a b c d e f g 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. mătase
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 631
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Benkő, Loránd (ed.) (1967–1976), A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára, 3 vols., Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 2, 860
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5403
11. ^ Gerstner, Károly (ed.) (2006–), Új magyar etimológiai szótár, Budapest: Nyelvtudományi Kutatóközpont; online at uesz.nytud.hu
12. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 635
13. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 671
14. ^ 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. 2, 62
15. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 185
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. mătase
17. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ex 25:4
18. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 46