os

Forms

os n (plural oase)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin ossum (“bone”), the popular form of Classical Latin os (“bone”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The Latin word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₃ésth₁ (“bone”).^[1]

The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian os, Megleno-Romanian uos and Istro-Romanian os.^{[2][6][7][8][9]} Its Romance cognates include Italian osso, French os, Catalan os, Spanish hueso and Portuguese osso.^[2][4] Pușcariu compares the plural ⟨oase⟩ “the bones of a body” with ossa.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is a charter of 1437.^[10] In Romanian texts the word appears in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, where the plural oasele “my bones” occurs eight times, as in Psalm 6:2.^[11][5]

Semantic evolution

Besides the bone itself the old language used the word for the body and for kinship: Ureche says of a claimant that he was „de osul lui Ștefan Vodă” “of Prince Stephen's bone”, his own son.^[10] The sense “family, lineage” is still listed by the dictionaries, as is the plural for a dead person's remains.^[2][12] In Oltenia and the Banat the word also means the stone of a fruit.^[2]

Many idioms use it: a fi numai piele și oase “to be skin and bone”, a-i ajunge cuțitul la os “to be at the end of one's patience”, and un os de ros “a bone to gnaw”, a profit thrown to someone.^[12][10]

Timeline

• 1437 – in a charter, the first record.^[10]
• early 16th century – oasele in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[11][5]
• c. 1551 – in the Voroneț psalter (Psalm 101:4).^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bone, a hard element of the skeleton of vertebrates; bone as a material for objects.^[12][5][1]
2. (figurative, in the plural) The body, a person.^[12]
3. (figurative) lineage, family, stock.^[12][2]
4. (in the plural) The remains of a dead person.^[2]
5. (regional, Oltenia and Banat) The stone of a fruit.^[2]

Word family

• osos
• oscior

Related words

• oseminte
• Latin ossum

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. os
3. ^ a b Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 107
4. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6114
5. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 229
6. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 316
7. ^ Kovačec, August (1998), Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik (s gramatikom i tekstovima), Pula
8. ^ Byhan, Arthur (1899), Istrorumänisches Glossar, Sechster Jahresbericht des Instituts für rumänische Sprache zu Leipzig: 174–366, p. 294
9. ^ Popovici, Iosif (1909), Dialectele romîne din Istria II: texte și glosar, Halle a. S., p. 132
10. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. os
11. ^ 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 6:2
12. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 754
13. ^ 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 101:4