picior

Forms

picior n (plural picioare)^[1] Moldavian speech has chicior, and familiar Muntenian speech a plural picere.^[2] MDA2 records old variants pecer and picer, with a regional plural picere.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin petiolus (“little foot; stalk of a fruit”).^{[4][3][5][2][6][1]} The Latin word is a diminutive of pēs (“foot”).^[7] Wiktionary and Pușcariu start from *pediciolus, a diminutive of pedīculus (“little foot”).^[1][8][9] Pușcariu called it the correct form, though the attested one would have given the same Romanian result.^[8] Candrea and Densusianu assumed an early contraction to *peciolus.^[10] Tiktin explains the /i/ of the first syllable from an unstressed /e/, as in vițel and cireașă.^[2]

The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian cicior, Megleno-Romanian picior and Istro-Romanian picioru.^[4][11] Its Romance relatives keep the plant sense: Italian picciuolo (“stalk of a fruit”) and Spanish pezuelo.^[8][4] Pușcariu thought the inherited Latin word for “foot” must also have lived on for a time, and saw a trace of it in the dialect forms with /kʲ/ such as ⟨chicior⟩.^[8] pețiol is the same Latin word borrowed later through French.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1410.^[2] In Romanian texts the plural picioare and the articled picioarele “the feet” are frequent in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, from the early 16th century, for example in Psalm 8:7, where all things are put under man's feet.^[12][3]

Semantic evolution

The Latin diminutive meant both a little foot and the stalk of a fruit.^[7] Romanian kept the body part and made it the ordinary word for the leg and the foot.^[7][4][5] By likeness it came to name the leg of a table or chair, the foundation of a building and the foot of a mountain, and also a low hill.^[5][4] It was also an old measure of length and the foot of a verse.^[5][4]

Regional senses include the handle of a scythe and, in Oltenia and Muntenia, a stack of thirteen sheaves that makes half a claie.^[4][13] Recent usage has pe picior “in a hurry, on the run”, quoted in the press from 2006, and slang uses the word for an immersion heater.^[14][15]

Timeline

• 1410 – the first record cited by Tiktin.^[2]
• early 16th century – picioare and picioarele in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[12][3]
• c. 1551–1558 – the singular piciorul in the Psaltirea Voroneț.^[16]
• 1825 – picioru in the Lexicon de la Buda, glossed with Latin pes.^[17]
• 2006 – pe picior “hastily” in the press.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. leg, foot: each of the two lower limbs of the human body, from the hip to the toes, and each of the limbs on which animals stand and move.^[5][1]
2. An artificial leg, a prosthesis.^[5]
3. The part of an object that supports it, such as the leg of a table or a chair.^[5][1]
4. The foundation, the massive lower part of a building or wall.^[5]
5. The foot of a mountain or hill.^[5][4]
6. (regional) the regulator of a plough.^[5]
7. (mathematics) piciorul perpendicularei “the foot of the perpendicular”.^[5]
8. An old unit of length, about a third of a metre.^[5]
9. A metrical foot.^[5][4]

Word family

• picioroangă
• picioruș
• împicioronga
• picioraș
• piciorel
• picioruț

Related words

• pețiol
• Aromanian cicior
• Latin petiolus

Usage notes

Cu un picior în groapă “with one foot in the grave” describes someone very old or near death, and din cap până în picioare means “from head to foot, completely”.^[5][2] A lua peste picior is “to make fun of someone”.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. picior
3. ^ 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, 368
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. picior
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 813
6. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. picior
7. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. petiolus
8. ^ a b c d Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 114
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. pediculus
10. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. picior
11. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 354
12. ^ 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 8:7
13. ^ Marin, Maria; Mărgărit, Iulia, Glosar dialectal. Muntenia, București: Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”, p. 316
14. ^ a b Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. picior
15. ^ Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. picior
16. ^ 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 90:12
17. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 503
18. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 480