pasăre

Forms

pasăre f (plural păsări)^[1] The old and popular form is pasere, with the old plural paseri; regional forms include pasare and păsare.^[2][3][4] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 has „să stăpânească peștilor mării și pasărilor ceriului” “let him rule over the fishes of the sea and the birds of the sky”.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin passer (“sparrow, small bird”), from the popular accusative ⟨passarem⟩ for classical ⟨passerem⟩.^[5][3][2][1] In Latin the word meant “sparrow” and also “bird”.^[6] Of the sister branches, the sources give Istro-Romanian pǫsăre.^[5] The Romance cognates are Italian passero, Occitan paser, Catalan passara, Spanish pájaro and Portuguese pássaro; the Spanish and Portuguese words also mean “bird”.^[5][6] De Vaan gives Schrijver's derivation of the Latin word from Proto-Indo-European *p(e)t-tro- (“one who flies, bird”), but calls the etymology uncertain.^[7][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is pasere in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century (Psalm 10).^[8][2] Tiktin's earliest is the Codicele Voronețean (James 3).^[3] The sense was “bird”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The general sense “bird” prevails, but in Transylvania, Banat, Maramureș and Bukovina pasăre also means the house sparrow, and regional compounds name other species: pasăre-de-munte the tree sparrow, pasăre-galbenă the yellowhammer.^[9][3][2] Modern usage adds domestic fowl and their meat, and the figurative sense “aeroplane”.^[4] Fairy tales have the pasăre măiastră, a magic bird.^[2][10] The proverb toată pasărea pe limba ei piere “every bird dies by its own tongue” says that people pay for their own deeds.^[2][10] The word is also a euphemism for the genitals.^[3][5]

Timeline

• early 16th century – pasere in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[8][2]
• c. 1551–1558 – pasărea in the Psaltirea Voronețeană.^[11]
• 16th century – in the Codicele Voronețean, Tiktin's first record.^[3]
• 1570 – the plural păsări in Coresi's Psalter.^[12]
• 1649 – pasere in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[13]
• 1688 – pasărilor ceriului “the birds of the sky” in the Bucharest Bible.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bird; in the plural, the class of egg-laying vertebrates with feathers and wings.^[4][1]
2. (figurative) An aeroplane.^[4]
3. Domestic fowl, poultry, especially a hen; poultry meat as food.^[4]
4. (regional) The sparrow.^[4][9]
5. In compounds, names of birds: pasărea-muscă “hummingbird”, pasărea-liră “lyrebird”, pasărea-paradisului “bird of paradise”.^[4]
6. (euphemistic) The male genitals.^[5][3]

Word family

• păsăresc
• păsărește
• păsărică
• păsărime
• păsăroi
• păsărar

Related words

• Latin passer

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 278
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. pasăre
4. ^ 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. 780
5. ^ 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. pasăre
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6268
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ 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 10:1
9. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. pasăre
10. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 939
11. ^ 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 101:8
12. ^ 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 77:31
13. ^ 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. pasere