piesă

Forms

piesă f (plural piese)^[1] The first record has a neuter form pies: „Piesul sau comedia numită «Norii»” “the play or comedy called ‘The Clouds’”.^[2][3] Costinescu's dictionary of 1870 spells it piessă.^[4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French pièce (“piece”).^{[5][6][3][7][1]} Scriban names Italian pezza and pezzo beside the French word.^[8] The French noun continues Medieval Latin petia, which goes back to Gaulish *pettia, reconstructed from Welsh peth and Breton pez.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record, of 1800, is in Molnar's translation of Millot's universal history, in the theatrical sense, where Aristophanes' “Clouds” is called a pies or comedy.^[2][7][3]

Semantic evolution

The word came in as a theatre term and spread with the theatre of the 1840s: the DLR quotes periodicals of 1846–1848 on plays performed in Romanian.^[2] Costinescu's dictionary of 1870 defines it as a work in verse or prose and has piesse justificative “supporting documents”, after French pièces justificatives.^[4] Other French senses followed: a coin, a piece of artillery, a part of a machine, a museum object and a piece of music.^[6][8] In Wallachia piesă was popularly a five-franc (five-lei) coin.^[8][3] Tiktin records the diminutives piesetă, piesuță and piescioară.^[7] Recent compounds include piesă-unicat “one-of-a-kind piece”, recorded from 1971.^[10]

Timeline

• 1800 – pies “play” in Molnar's translation of Millot, the first record.^[3][7][2]
• 1846–1848 – piese teatrale and piese de teatru in periodicals.^[2]
• 1870 – piesse justificative “supporting documents” in Costinescu's dictionary.^[4]
• 1939 – Scriban records the popular sense “five-franc coin” in Wallachia.^[8]
• 1971 – piesă-unicat “one-of-a-kind piece” in the press.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A removable part of a machine, mechanism, instrument or building;^[6] piesă anatomică “an anatomical specimen”.^[6]
2. One item of a set or series: a garment of an outfit, a chessman or game piece, a gun of an artillery unit, a metal coin.^[6][3]
3. Each of the documents in a file or collection.^[6]
4. A valuable object or work of art in a museum or collection.^[6]
5. A play, a dramatic work written for the stage; by extension, a literary work.^[6][3]
6. A musical composition, a song.^[6][1]

Related words

• French pièce

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. piesă
3. ^ 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, 377
4. ^ a b c Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 292
5. ^ 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. piesă
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 816
7. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. piesă
8. ^ a b c d Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 978
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ a b Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. piesă