morgă

Forms

morgă f (plural morgi)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French morgue, in both its senses, “haughty bearing” and “mortuary”.^{[2][3][4][1][5]} In French the noun, “haughty air”, is a deverbal noun from morguer (“to treat with arrogance”), a verb borrowed from the Occitan dialects of the south.^[6] The French mortuary sense grew out of it: the word first named the place in a prison where the warders looked new prisoners over, then, from 1674, the place where unidentified bodies were laid out to be recognised.^[6] Scriban already explained the Romanian senses this way.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The haughtiness sense is the older one in the DLR's quotations, which begin with Codru-Drăgușanu, who writes of a patron's morgă aristocratică “aristocratic haughtiness”, and with Bolliac.^[4] Caragiale lists „orgoliul britanic și morga spaniolă” “British pride and Spanish haughtiness”.^[4] For the mortuary sense Șăineanu's dictionary of 1929 is the earliest of our sources, and MDA2's first quotation is from Jean Bart's novel Europolis.^[7][3]

Semantic evolution

Romanian took over both French senses, and the dictionaries treat them as two headwords: DEX and the DILF number the mortuary morgă¹ and the haughtiness morgă², the DLR the other way round.^[2][8][4] The mortuary first meant a building where found and unidentified bodies were kept for recognition; later it also named a hospital room where the dead are kept until burial, and the forensic institute.^[7][2] CADE recorded a slang sense “prison”.^[4][3] The haughtiness sense is now literary.^[2]

Timeline

• 1929 – “place where the bodies of people found dead are displayed for identification” in Șăineanu.^[7]
• 1931 – the slang sense “prison” in CADE.^[4]
• 1939 – Scriban gives both “haughty air” and “mortuary”.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A mortuary or morgue: a building where unidentified bodies are kept and where autopsies are carried out; a forensic institute.^[2][3][1]
2. A room in a hospital where the dead are kept until the cause of death is established or until burial.^[2][9]
3. (slang, dated) prison.^[3][4]
4. (literary) A haughty, disdainful bearing; arrogance, conceit: Vorbea cu morgă, fără să-i privească.^[2][3]

Related words

• French morgue

Usage notes

DEX writes the two senses as separate headwords, morgă¹ “mortuary” (plural morgi) and morgă² “haughtiness” (no plural), but gives both the same French source.^[2] The DLR numbers them in the opposite order.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. 674
3. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 56
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. morgă
5. ^ a b c Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 833
6. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ a b c Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 409
8. ^ Costăchescu, Adriana; Dincă, Daniela; Dragoste, Ramona; Popescu, Mihaela; Scurtu, Gabriela (2009–2010), Dicționar de împrumuturi lexicale din limba franceză (DILF), 2 vols., Craiova: Universitaria
9. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. morgă