mătușă

Forms

mătușă f (plural mătuși)^[1] The plural is mătuși;^[2][3] mătușe is old and regional, and the singular mătușe was usual in the west.^[2][3] Short forms are tușă and the regional mătu.^[4][2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *mita, a form of Latin amita (“father's sister, aunt”) that lost its first syllable, extended in Romanian with the diminutive suffix -ușă, as in auș.^[5][1][6] DEX, MDA2 and the DLR give simply the Latin word.^[7][4][2] The Latin word also survives in dialects of northern Italy and the Alps and in Old French ante, and Ciorănescu compares Albanian emtë.^[5][6]

Tiktin left open a second source, Old Church Slavonic мати (mati, “mother”), comparing a Russian pet word for “mother”.^[8] Scriban and Cihac took the word from Russian;^[3][5] Ciorănescu finds this hard to square with the sounds, and holds, after Candrea, that the Ukrainian word Pascu proposed as the source is itself a loan from Romanian.^[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1433.^[8] The first Romanian text MDA2 cites is Moxa's chronicle of 1620: „ea se sculă cu o mătușe a ei, soră tătâne-său” “she set off with an aunt of hers, her father's sister”.^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

The word means the sister of either parent, so it covers both Latin amita and matertera; old law texts also had mătușă mică “a parent's female cousin” and mătușă mare “a grandparent's sister”.^[8][4][2] From the family sense it became a respectful way to address or speak of an older woman of the village, as in Creangă, and more generally “old woman”.^[8][7] Regional uses include “stepmother” and “grandmother”, a jocular “big bottle” in Transylvania, a euphemistic plural for malaria, and in the Banat the name of a dance and its tune.^[4][2]

Timeline

• 1433 – the first record cited by Tiktin.^[8]
• 1620 – „o mătușe a ei” in Moxa's chronicle, MDA2's first record.^[4][2]
• 1640 – mătușă-sa “his aunt” in a law text.^[2]
• 1650–1675 – „mătușea craiului” “the king's aunt” in a manuscript chronicle.^[2][8]
• 1801 – Matùșe glossed with Latin amita and matertera in Klein's dictionary.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. An aunt: the sister of one's father or mother; less often, a parent's female cousin or an uncle's wife.^[7][4]
2. (popular) A respectful term for addressing or speaking of an older woman; by extension, an old woman.^[7][4]

Related words

• tușă
• Latin amita

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. mătușă
3. ^ a b c d Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 791
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1464
5. ^ a b c d 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. mătușă
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 424
7. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 631
8. ^ 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. mătușă
9. ^ Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 397