mesteca

Forms

mesteca (third-person singular present mestecă, past participle mestecat, third-person subjunctive mestece), first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin masticō (“to chew”).^{[2][3][4][5][1][6][7]} The Latin verb is a late, popular formation with the suffix -icō, borrowed from Ancient Greek μαστιχάω (mastikháō, “to grind the teeth”).^[1] Tiktin explains Romanian ⟨e⟩ for Latin ⟨a⟩ as arising first in the forms stressed on the ending, as in blestema.^[3]

The verb survives south of the Danube: Aromanian meastic and Megleno-Romanian mestic.^[8][2][7] Its Romance cognates include Italian masticare, French mâcher, Occitan mastegar and Spanish mascar.^[6][2] The neologism mastica is a doublet, borrowed later from the same Latin word.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Bucharest Bible of 1688, in the Book of Job: „carii și rădăcinele lemnelor mesteca de foamete mare” “who chewed even the roots of the trees for great hunger”.^[3][9] MDA2 and the DÉRom also date the word from 1688.^[4][7]

Semantic evolution

The basic sense is chewing food before swallowing it.^[5][9] From it came the sense of turning something over in the mouth with the tongue, as a horse champs the foam on its bit in Coșbuc's verse.^[9] A figurative sense, “to brood over, to plot”, is recorded from Caragiale on, often in the phrase a mesteca în sine.^[9][4]

The proverb Mestecă cât poți înghiți “chew only as much as you can swallow” warns against greed.^[3][4] Damé's dictionary gives a mesteca tutun “to chew tobacco”.^[10]

Timeline

• 1688 – mesteca “chewed” in the Bucharest Bible (Job 30:5), the first record.^[3][4][11]
• 1893–1895 – a mesteca tutun “to chew tobacco” in Damé's dictionary.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To chew: to crush food with the teeth and mix it in the mouth before swallowing.^[5][4][1]
2. To roll or turn something in the mouth with the tongue: mestecă gumă toată ziua “he chews gum all day”.^[5][12]
3. (figurative) To plot, to plan something in one's mind.^[5][4]

Word family

• mestecător

Related words

• mastica
• Aromanian meastic

Usage notes

DEX and MDA2 list a second verb mesteca “to mix, to stir” as a variant of amesteca.^[5][4] It has a separate source: Ciorănescu derives it from Vulgar Latin *mixticō, built on mixtus (“mixed”), following Pușcariu, Candrea and Densusianu and the REW.^[2][13][1] Older dictionaries define this verb by stirring porridge (mămăliga) in the pot.^[14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. mesteca
3. ^ 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. mesteca
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, 1494
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. 643
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5398
7. ^ a b c Buchi, Éva; Schweickard, Wolfgang, eds. (2008–), Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom), Nancy: ATILF, http://www.atilf.fr/DERom
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 677
9. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. mesteca
10. ^ a b Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. s.v. mesteca
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Iov 30:5
12. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. mesteca
13. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5398a
14. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 62