mană

Forms

mană f (uncountable)^[1] The Psaltirea Scheiană spells it mannă: „Și ploo lor mannă să mărănce” “and he rained manna upon them to eat”.^[2][3] A regional variant is meana.^[3][2]

Etymology

It is the Biblical word for manna, borrowed from Old Church Slavonic мана (mana), which the dictionaries give together with Modern Greek μάννα (mánna).^[4][3][2][5] Ciorănescu puts the Greek word first, partly through Bulgarian мана (mana), following Tiktin and Candrea.^[6][1] The Bulgarian etymological dictionary takes the plant-disease sense through Bulgarian, where the word also means a sweet juice on leaves and a disease of the vine.^[7] The word has a counterpart in Aromanian manã (“manna; fog; blight”), also from Greek.^[6][8] It goes back through Ancient Greek μάννα (mánna) of the Septuagint to Biblical Hebrew מָן (mān, “manna”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The roPsalt index's first record is in Coresi's Psalter of 1570, at Psalm 77, where God rained manna on the Israelites.^[9] MDA2 starts with the Psaltirea Scheiană of the 1570s, and the Palia de la Orăștie of 1581 has „I-au hrănit cu mană în pustie” “he fed them with manna in the wilderness”.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

From the food sent from heaven the word came to mean a godsend, and in folk speech the yield of cattle and crops: mana vacilor is the cows' milk, which witches were believed to steal on St George's Day, and mana grâului the yield of the wheat.^[5][10] Hence the general senses “plenty, abundance” and the adjective mănos “fertile”.^[6][4] In Maramureș it means rich milk and honey.^[11] Popular speech also gave the name to pollen and nectar, and to the sweet sap of the manna ash, used as a laxative.^[3] Another line of senses names a sticky secretion on leaves after cold nights, harmful summer rain in sunshine, and the diseases of plants caused by parasitic fungi, especially the downy mildew of the vine (mana viilor).^[3][4][12]

Timeline

• 1570 – mană in Coresi's Psalter, the first record.^[9]
• c. 1573–1578 – mannă in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[3][2]
• 1581 – the Palia de la Orăștie.^[2]
• 1688 – ten occurrences in the Bucharest Bible, in Exodus 16 and Numbers 11.^[13]
• 1870 – Costinescu glosses it also as a harmful summer dew or rain.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. manna: an edible lichen growing in small grey clumps on rocks, which the wind carries far and drops like rain (Lecanora esculenta); by extension, bread made of it; in the Bible, the food of the Israelites in the desert.^[4][3][1]
2. (figurative) Yield, produce; abundance, plenty.^[4][1]
3. The name of several diseases of cultivated plants caused by parasitic fungi, especially the mildew of the vine.^[4][1]
4. (popular) Pollen; nectar; the sticky sweet secretion (honeydew) on the leaves of some plants.^[3][1]
5. Summer dew or rain in sunshine that harms the plants; by extension, the damage caused by hot sun right after rain.^[4]
6. mană-de-ape: a poisonous grass of marshes and water edges (Glyceria aquatica).^[4][3]

Word family

• mănos
• înmănoșa
• mănoșie

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. mană
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1425
4. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 615
5. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. mană
6. ^ 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. mană
7. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 3, 636
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 653
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 77:28
10. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 379
11. ^ Ștef, Dorin (2021), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din județul Maramureș, 3rd ed., Baia Mare, p. s.v. mană
12. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 770
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ieșirea 16:31
14. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 68