pisa

Forms

pisa (third-person singular present pisează, past participle pisat) 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pīnsō (“to pound, crush”), in its popular form pīsō, conjugated in the first conjugation.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The Aromanian counterpart is chisedz.^[2][6][7] Its Romance cognates include French piser, Occitan pizar, Spanish pisar and Portuguese pisar; Italian pigiare continues a Latin derivative.^[2][8]

The Latin verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *peys- (“to crush”), with a nasal infix in the present.^[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the early 16th-century Psaltirea Hurmuzaki: „Tu pisași capul zmeului” “you crushed the head of the dragon”.^[10][4][11] A sermon of about 1580 has „să piseze petri” “to crush stones”, and the 1640s law code writes of poison pounded in a mortar.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The verb first meant to crush or pound something with repeated blows, as in a mortar, and is still used of spices, sugar or salt.^[5][10] Regionally it means to husk grain in a mortar.^[4] By extension it means to trample snow or earth, and jokingly to dance.^[5] Two figurative senses are colloquial: to give someone a sound beating, and to pester someone by saying the same thing over and over.^[5][12]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – pisași in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[4][11]
• c. 1580 – să piseze petri in a sermon.^[10]
• 1649 – the participle pisat in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[13]
• 1749 – recipes for pounded spices.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To pound or crush a substance with repeated blows, as with a pestle, to break it up or grind it to powder: a pisa piper “to pound pepper”.^[5][14]
2. To tread down snow or earth; by extension, to dance.^[5]
3. (figurative) To beat someone soundly.^[5]
4. (figurative) To pester someone by repeating the same thing.^[5]

Word family

• pisoca
• pisălog
• pisălogeală
• pisătură

Related words

• piuă
• Aromanian chisedz

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. pisa
3. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. pisa
4. ^ 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, 390
5. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 822
6. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 609
7. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 63
8. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. pigiare
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. pīnsō
10. ^ 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. pisa
11. ^ 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 73:15
12. ^ Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. pisa
13. ^ Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. pisat
14. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. pisa