miță

Forms

miță f (plural mițe)^[1] A regional neuter miț (plural mițe, mițuri) and a plural miți also occur.^[2][3]

Etymology

In most accounts it is inherited from Vulgar Latin *agnicius (“of a lamb”), formed on agnus (“lamb”).^[4][2][1][5] Scriban starts from *lāna agnicia (“lamb's wool”), which he thinks became ⟨*amniță⟩ and then ⟨miță⟩.^[6] The word has a cognate south of the Danube, Aromanian njitsã (“lamb's wool”), which Papahagi also takes from the same Latin form.^[7][1][8] The Latin noun goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₂egʷnós (“lamb”).^[9][1]

Ciorănescu calls the origin doubtful: this etymon seems possible to him but does not explain every sense.^[8] He lists other proposals and finds them all doubtful: Polish jagnięcy (“of a lamb”) (Cihac), Latin mīca (“crumb”) (Tiktin) and mâță “cat” (the REW).^[8][10][3] He also considers that it may stand for an older ⟨*niță⟩, from a Latin word that he compares with Sicilian words for “thread”.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the plural mițele in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon of 1649, where it glosses a Slavonic word for wool.^[11] Tiktin's first record is the Latin–Romanian dictionary of the Anonymus Caransebesiensis, about 1670.^[3] MDA2 dates it to a document of 1688, which sells „miță albă” “white lamb's wool”.^[2][12]

Semantic evolution

The word is a shepherds' term: the wool shorn from lambs of three or four months, and the poorer wool from the head, tail and legs of sheep.^[2][12] In Maramureș it is the fine wool shorn from the lambs about St Elijah's day in July.^[13] From the fleece it passed to the long, matted locks of an animal's coat and to any tuft of hair or wool.^[4][2] Tiktin records the tuft of hair at a horse's fetlock and the phrase a purta cojocul cu mițele afară “to wear the sheepskin with the fleece outward”.^[3]

Scriban and Ștef note that it was borrowed into Ukrainian as micka “lamb's wool, lambskin cap”.^[6][13]

Timeline

• 1649 – mițele in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon, the first record.^[11]
• c. 1670 – miță in the Anonymus Caransebesiensis.^[3]
• 1688 – miță albă “white lamb's wool” in a document.^[2][12]
• 1807 – miți counted by the oca in a document.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. (mostly in the plural) Longer hairs in an animal's fleece that form a curl; a tuft of hair or wool.^[4][1]
2. Wool shorn for the first time from lambs; poor wool shorn from the head, tail and legs of sheep.^[4][2]
3. A tuft of hair at a horse's fetlock.^[8][3]

Word family

• mițui
• mițuit
• mițos

Related words

• miel
• Aromanian njitsã
• Latin agnus

Usage notes

A separate word miță (plural miți), from German Mütze, means “cap, peaked cap” in Banat.^[2][12] Old dictionaries also record miță as a pet name for a cat.^[14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. 2, 30
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. míță
4. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 662
5. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. miță
6. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 817
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 799
8. ^ a b c d e 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. miță
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Cihac, A. de (1879), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane II: Éléments slaves, magyars, turcs, grecs-moderne et albanais, Frankfurt am Main, p. 198
11. ^ a b 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. mițele
12. ^ a b c d e Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. miță
13. ^ a b Ștef, Dorin (2021), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din județul Maramureș, 3rd ed., Baia Mare, p. s.v. míță
14. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 107