palmă

Forms

palmă f (plural palme)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin palma (“palm of the hand”).^{[2][3][4][5][6][1]} Wiktionary traces the Latin word to Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₂meh₂.^[1]

It survives in all four branches: Aromanian palmã, Megleno-Romanian palmă and Istro-Romanian pǫme.^[2][7][8] Its Romance cognates include Italian palma, Occitan pauma, French paume, Catalan palma, Spanish palma and Portuguese palma.^[2][9] Ciorănescu notes that Romani palma was borrowed from Romanian.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, at Psalm 38:7, which a later psalter renders „Cu palme măsurate ai pus zilele mele” “you have made my days a few hands' breadth”.^[10][6] MDA2 dates it to a text of 1550–1580 printed in Gaster's chrestomathy.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

Besides the inner side of the hand, the word took two old senses: a blow with the open hand, a slap, and a measure of length, the span of a hand or one eighth of a stânjen.^[2][5][6] Ciorănescu gives the measure as about 25 cm in Wallachia and 28 cm in Moldavia.^[2] From it comes o palmă de loc “a tiny plot of land”, and in Argeș the word itself means a small field.^[3][11]

Many fixed expressions use it: ca în palmă “perfectly flat; down to the last detail”, a ține pe cineva ca în palmă “to pamper someone”, a bate din palme “to clap”.^[3][4] Work done by hand alone is cu palma, and a pălmaș was a labourer with nothing but his hands to work with.^[6][3][2]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – palma in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[10]
• c. 1550–1580 – în palmă in a text printed by Gaster, MDA2's first record.^[4][5]
• 1673 – la tine-n palmă in Dosoftei's verse Psalter.^[6]
• c. 1760 – cu palmă peste obraz “a slap across the face”.^[5]
• 1887 – palmă “palm branch”, a separate loan from French, in Odobescu.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The inner side of the hand, its palm.^[3][1]
2. A slap, a blow with the open hand: i-a tras o palmă.^[2][1]
3. (historical) An old measure of length, the span of a hand, about 25–28 cm.^[2][3]
4. (figurative) A humiliation, a moral defeat.^[12]

Word family

• pălmui
• pălmuială
• pălmaș
• palmac

Related words

• Aromanian palmã

Usage notes

DEX has a second palmă, dated, “palm branch (as a sign of victory)”, also an ornament, with palmele academice “the Palmes académiques”, a French distinction; it is a 19th-century loan from French palme, first recorded in Odobescu in 1887.^[3][4][5] Ciorănescu calls the two words doublets.^[2] A popular plural pălmi is also recorded.^[4]

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 i j 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. palmă
3. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 765
4. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 252
5. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. palmă
6. ^ 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. palmă
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 813
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 213
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6171
10. ^ 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 38:7
11. ^ Constantinescu, Grigore; Constantinescu, Eugenia (2014), Glosar. Arealul etnocultural Argeș-Muscel, p. 77
12. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 925