pastilă

Forms

pastilă f (plural pastile)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French pastille.^[2][3][4] MDA2, DEX and the DLR also name borrowed from German Pastille as a source.^[2][3][4] Wiktionary and the DN name French as the main source, the DN comparing German.^[1][5] Scriban also cites Italian pastiglia.^[6]

The French word is a borrowing of the Renaissance, first recorded in 1538, from Spanish pastilla (“scented paste”), from a popular Latin *pastella, from Late Latin pastellum (“paste”), a form of Latin pastillus.^[7] German took its word in the 18th century from the same Latin noun, meaning “little ball of dough”, a diminutive of pānis (“bread”), with its feminine gender after French.^[8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first dated record is in the newspaper Curierul românesc of 1848: „Deschise cutia și examină pastilele” “he opened the box and examined the pastilles”.^[4] A household medical handbook translated in 1852 recommends „pastile sau hapuri de bună resuflare” “pastilles or pills for sweet breath”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In the 19th century the word meant a small sweet or scented cake, eaten or burned to perfume a room;^[10] Costinescu describes it so in 1870.^[10] The phrase pastile de parfumat kept the second use.^[4][2] The sense of a small round medicine, a tablet or lozenge, became the main one, while dictionaries note that calling a compressed tablet pastilă is loose usage.^[3][11]

Later senses come from the shape: a small disc in a machine, a round traffic island in the middle of a square, and in computing the silicon wafer that carries an integrated circuit.^[3][12] In slang pastilă also means a hint.^[13]

Timeline

• 1538 – French pastille, from Spanish.^[7]
• 1848 – pastilele in Curierul românesc, the first dated Romanian record.^[4]
• 1852 – pastile for sweet breath in a translated medical handbook.^[4]
• 1870 – “small scented cakes” in Costinescu's dictionary.^[10]
• 1996 – pastilă “traffic island” in the press.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. A pill or lozenge: a medicine or sweet in the form of a tablet or a small round disc; loosely, any compressed tablet.^[3][1]
2. A small disc-shaped part used in some machines or mechanisms.^[3][14]
3. A raised traffic island in the middle of a square or a wide crossing, for pedestrians and to guide traffic.^[3][12]
4. (computing) A semiconductor wafer carrying an integrated circuit, a chip.^[12][14]
5. (slang) A hint, an allusion.^[13]

Related words

• pâine
• Latin pastillus

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 280
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. 781
4. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. pastilă
5. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. pastilă
6. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 940
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. pastille
8. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 688
9. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
10. ^ a b c Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 260
11. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 335
12. ^ a b c d Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. pastilă
13. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. pastilă
14. ^ a b Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. pastilă