marmură

Forms

marmură f (plural marmuri)^[1] Variants include marmoră, the old marmure and the regional marmor; the Moldavian old texts also have a masculine marmure: „stâlpii și marmurii” “the pillars and the marbles” (Dosoftei).^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin marmor (“marble”).^{[2][4][5][3][1][6]} The Latin word is borrowed from Ancient Greek μάρμαρος (mármaros, “stone, marble”).^[1] Beekes describes the Greek word's first sense as “stone, rock” and considers it possibly Pre-Greek.^[7][1] Pascu derived the Romanian word directly from Greek, which Ciorănescu finds less likely.^[2]

The word is feminine in Romanian; the REW points to the phrase piatră marmură “marble stone”, which has a parallel in southern Italy.^[6] The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian marmar or marmură, and Megleno-Romanian marmură.^[2][8] Its Romance cognates include Italian marmo, Occitan marme, French marbre and Spanish mármol.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1467; a personal name Marmure and a place name Mărmurănii follow in 1476.^[3] MDA2's first Romanian text is a document from before 1580 in Cuvente den bătrâni: „făcu stîlpu de marmure” “she made the pillar of marble”.^[4][9] Ciorănescu calls it not a popular word, recorded from the 17th century.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Old texts use it of the stone, often in piatră marmură or piatră de marmură, and of a block or sculpture of marble.^[4][5] A phrase compares cold, unfeeling people to it: a fi rece ca marmura.^[5] Regional senses are porcelain, an enamelled pot and, in Transylvania, a boundary stone.^[4][3]

Romanian derived the verb înmărmuri “to turn to stone, be petrified”, with a parallel in Megleno-Romanian mărmurisi.^[2]

Timeline

• 1467 – the first record.^[3]
• 1476 – the personal name Marmure and the place name Mărmurănii.^[3]
• before 1580 – marmure in a document printed in Cuvente den bătrâni.^[4]
• 1649 – marmure glosses Old Church Slavonic алавастръ (alavastrŭ, “alabaster”) in Mardarie's lexicon.^[10]
• 1688 – marmură and marmure in the Bucharest Bible.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. marble, a crystalline limestone of various colours that can be carved and polished, used in sculpture and architecture.^[5][4]
2. A block or piece of carved and polished marble; a marble statue.^[5][12]
3. (regional) porcelain; an enamelled pot; in Transylvania, a boundary stone.^[4]

Word family

• înmărmuri

Related words

• Latin marmor

Usage notes

Expressions: a rămâne de marmură “to be struck dumb”, a fi rece ca marmura “to be cold and unmoved”.^[13][5] A separate regional marmură names a cattle disease (Geoagiu–Orăștie), of unknown origin.^[9][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. marmură
3. ^ 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. marmură
4. ^ 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, 1436
5. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 620
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5368
7. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 656
9. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. marmură
10. ^ 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. marmure
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Cântarea Cântărilor 5:16
12. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 20
13. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. marmură