pată

Forms

pată f (plural pete)^[1] Besides pată there is an older and regional form peată, which Scriban places in eastern Muntenia, and regional pantă and peartă.^[2][3]

Etymology

Its origin is not settled: DEX, NODEX, MDA2 and the DLR call it of unknown origin.^[4][5][2][6] Ciorănescu takes the noun as a back-formation from Romanian păta (“to stain”), and Wiktionary calls this probable.^[7][1] He derives the verb from Vulgar Latin *pictō (“to paint”), formed on Latin pictus (“painted”), and compares Italian pittare (“to wipe”) and the sense of Spanish pinta (“spot, stain”) beside its verb “to paint”.^[7][1] In this view Latin /kt/ should have given /pt/, and the /p/ was lost by dissimilation from the initial /p/, as in boteza from Latin baptizō.^[7][1] MDA2 and DEX derive the verb from the noun instead.^[8][9]

Ciorănescu lists the older proposals, which start from the noun.^[7] Tiktin, Candrea, Pușcariu and the REW take it from Vulgar Latin *pitta, perhaps the same as Ancient Greek πίττα (pítta, “pitch”).^[7][10] The REW sets it under Modern Greek πίττα (pítta, “cake”), as did Rosetti.^[11][7] Scriban also started from the Greek word for pitch.^[3] G. Meyer compared Albanian petë (“sheet of metal”);^[7][12] Cihac and Miklosich looked to Slavonic words, and Byhan to a Ruthenian word for “spot”.^[7][12] Șăineanu thought the noun was shortened from the variant peată and compared the Ruthenian word.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Anonymus Caransebesiensis, a Romanian–Latin glossary of about 1650–1700, which Tiktin dates about 1670.^[2][10][6] The verb păta is first recorded in the same glossary.^[8] Klein's dictionary of 1801 glosses pata with Latin macula, a spot on the face.^[14]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is a stain left on a surface by a foreign substance; from it come a patch of another colour on an animal's coat, a bird's plumage or the skin, and the dark spots on the face of the Sun or the Moon.^[4][2] The figurative sense, a stain on someone's honour, appears in 19th-century writers: Negruzzi wrote that Alexandru Lăpușneanu left „o pată de sânge în istoria Moldaviei” “a bloodstain on the history of Moldavia”.^[6] The phrase a căuta pete în soare “to look for spots in the sun”, that is, to find fault with what is faultless, is already in Costinescu's dictionary of 1870.^[15][4] Painting and drawing use the word for a patch of colour.^[2] In slang it means a fixed idea or obsession.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1650-1700 – pată and the verb păta in the Anonymus Caransebesiensis glossary, the first record.^[2][8]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary: pata “spot (on the face)”.^[14]
• 1870 – Costinescu records a găsi pete în soare “to find spots in the sun”.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A stain: a mark left on a surface by grease, dirt or a coloured substance; the area it covers, or the substance itself.^[4][1]
2. A spot or patch of a different colour on an animal's coat or a bird's plumage, or on the skin.^[4][2]
3. A darker area seen on the disc of the Sun, the Moon or another heavenly body: a căuta pete în soare “to find fault where there is none”.^[4]
4. (figurative) A blemish on someone's honour, a disgraceful deed: fără pată “spotless, blameless”.^[4][5]
5. pată albă: a blank on the map, an unexplored or unknown area.^[5]
6. (slang) A fixed idea, an obsession.^[16]

Word family

• pătat

Related words

• păta

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, 282
3. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 942
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. 782
5. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. pată
6. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. pată
7. ^ 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. păta
8. ^ 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, 311
9. ^ DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 790
10. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. pată
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6546
12. ^ a b Cihac, A. de (1879), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane II: Éléments slaves, magyars, turcs, grecs-moderne et albanais, Frankfurt am Main, p. 248
13. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 469
14. ^ a b Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 414
15. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 261
16. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. pată