pistă

Forms

pistă f (plural piste)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French piste.^[2][1][3] DEX, the DILF and Marcu also name borrowed from Italian pista as a model, and Marcu & Maneca compare the Italian word.^[4][5][6][7] The French noun was itself borrowed in 1559 from the Italian word, a variant of pesta “track”, the noun of pestare (“to crush, trample”), from Late Latin pistō (“to pound”).^[8][1] Scriban gave the same chain and compared piston and pisa.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Costinescu's dictionary of 1870 has pistă as a hunting word: the track of an animal, the scent of game that a hound follows.^[10] MDA2 and the DLR take their first record, the track a horse leaves on the ground, from an undated veterinary encyclopaedia.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

From the track came the ground prepared for running: Scriban gives a place for racing horses and vehicles as the first sense, besides the trail of game or of a robber.^[9] Newspapers of the 1950s use it for athletics tracks, ice rinks and velodromes, and technical dictionaries for the runways of airfields.^[2] Camil Petrescu used it for a dance floor, a sense now rare.^[2][11] The figurative “line, direction” is in Rebreanu, whose investigators start their inquiries on another track.^[2] Pistă sonoră is the soundtrack of a film or a magnetic tape.^[4][7] In Muntenia the word also names a platform for storing grain.^[12]

Timeline

• 1870 – the track or scent of game, in Costinescu.^[10]
• 1939 – a place for racing horses and vehicles, in Scriban.^[9]
• 1950 – an athletics track and a skating rink in the sports press.^[2]
• 1955–1957 – the runway of an airfield, the dance floor and the figurative “direction”.^[11]
• 1971 – pistard, a track cyclist, borrowed from French.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A strip of ground laid out as a road for special traffic; a racetrack or track for sports; the runway of an airfield; a dance floor.^[4][1]
2. (figurative) A course, way or direction; a lead in an inquiry.^[4][3]
3. (often pistă sonoră) The soundtrack along the edge of a film or a band of magnetic tape.^[4]
4. The track an animal leaves on the ground.^[3][10]

Related words

• pistard
• French piste

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. pistă
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, 392
4. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 822
5. ^ Costăchescu, Adriana; Dincă, Daniela; Dragoste, Ramona; Popescu, Mihaela; Scurtu, Gabriela (2009–2010), Dicționar de împrumuturi lexicale din limba franceză (DILF), 2 vols., Craiova: Universitaria, p. s.v. pistă
6. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. pistă
7. ^ a b Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. pistă
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b c Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 983
10. ^ a b c Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 297
11. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 430
12. ^ Marin, Maria; Mărgărit, Iulia, Glosar dialectal. Muntenia, București: Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”, p. s.v. pistă
13. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. pistard