pieptăna

Forms

pieptăna (third-person singular present piaptănă, past participle pieptănat, third-person subjunctive piaptăne) 1st conjugation^[1] Older and regional infinitives are pieptena and pieptina, and the regional piectăna.^[2][3] The present has the stem piept- beside piapt-: pieptăn or piaptăn, piepteni or piapteni, third person piaptănă, in older texts pieptănă.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pectinō (“to comb”), the verb formed in Latin on pecten (“comb”).^{[4][3][2][1][5]} Ciorănescu lists it among the derivatives of pieptene “comb”, from Latin pĕctĭnem, but adds that it may continue the Latin verb directly, as Pușcariu, Candrea and Densusianu and the REW hold.^[6] The verb has the same form in Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian: Aromanian chiaptin and Megleno-Romanian chiaptin.^[6]

The Latin verb lives on across Romance: Italian pettinare, French peigner, Occitan penchenar, Catalan pentinar, Spanish peinar and Portuguese pentear; in many places it also means “to hackle hemp”.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is the Romanian Herodotus of 1645.^[2] MDA2 and the DLR begin with the Anonymus Caransebesiensis, a Romanian–Latin glossary of about 1650–1700.^[3][8] An early sentence quoted by Tiktin and the DLR, from a text of 1746, has the core sense: „Cela ce-și piaptănă părul și-și netezeaște barba” “he who combs his hair and smooths his beard”.^[2][8]

Semantic evolution

The verb first meant combing the hair or beard, of oneself or of another person.^[8][3] From there it came to mean doing someone's hair, and rarely dressing up; a cat is said to comb itself when it licks its fur clean.^[3] Tiktin records the technical sense of combing flax, hemp and wool, and MDA2 that of grooming animals with a currycomb.^[2][3]

The figurative senses are colloquial: “to give someone a good thrashing” and “to polish one's style or speech”.^[4][9] MDA2 has a rare old sense, to torture someone with toothed instruments, and a regional one, to smooth a load of hay with the rake or the fork.^[3]

Timeline

• 1645 – in the Romanian translation of Herodotus, Tiktin's first record.^[2]
• c. 1650–1700 – in the Anonymus Caransebesiensis glossary.^[3][8]
• 1746 – „își piaptănă părul” “combs his hair”, quoted by Tiktin.^[2][8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To comb the hair or beard, one's own or another's; also, to do someone's hair, to style it.^[4][3][1]
2. (popular) To currycomb an animal.^[4][3]
3. To comb textile fibres such as flax or wool, to clean them and pick out the best.^[4][10]
4. (figurative, colloquial) To give someone a sound beating.^[4][10]
5. (figurative, colloquial) To polish one's style or way of speaking.^[4]

Word family

• pieptănătură
• pieptănat

Related words

• pieptene
• Aromanian chiaptin
• Latin pectinō

Usage notes

The proverb satul arde și baba se piaptănă “the village is burning and the old woman is combing her hair” mocks someone busy with trifles in a crisis.^[9]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. pieptăna
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 374
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. 815
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b 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. pieptene
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6329
8. ^ a b c d e Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. pieptăna
9. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 413
10. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. pieptăna