piuă

Forms

piuă f (plural pive)^[1] The 1688 Bible has the older form pio: „o pisa în pio” “they pounded it in the mortar”.^[2] Old and regional forms include piă, pio and pivă; the plural is pive or piue, regionally piie, pii, piui.^[3][2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *pilla, a form of pīla (“mortar”).^{[4][3][1][5][6]} Ciorănescu writes ⟨pilla⟩ without an asterisk, as the form is found in Du Cange.^[5][7] Tiktin and Candrea and Densusianu take ⟨*pilla⟩ as a shortened diminutive of ⟨pīla⟩.^[2][8] Graur argued against this: ⟨pilla⟩ is recorded in antiquity, as an expressive variant of ⟨pīla⟩, not a contracted diminutive.^[7] The REW also notes that Romanian and some southern Italian forms seem to require ⟨*pilla⟩.^[9]

The expected form ⟨piă⟩ became ⟨piuă⟩ after words like ziuă and steauă; the variant pivă has /v/ for /u/, as in măduvă.^[8][5] The Latin word is continued in Romance as Italian pila (“trough, mortar”), Occitan pela and Spanish pila.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the word to 1491, from Drăganu's collection of old records.^[2] MDA2 begins with a text of before 1588 published in Hasdeu's Cuvente den bătrâni.^[3] In the 1688 Bible the manna is gathered, ground in mills and pounded in mortars, „o pisa în pio”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is the mortar in which grain, salt and the like were pounded with a pestle.^[2][3] The word passed to other things that pound or crush: the fulling mill that felts woollen cloth by beating it, the box of a stamp mill where ore is crushed, a press for oil seeds, and a socket in a machine.^[3][4] The old chroniclers use pive for a mortar for firing bombs: Nicolae Costin's chronicle gives one ruler eighty of them.^[2][5]

Regional senses include a wooden salt cellar, a pig trough and, figuratively, a wisdom tooth.^[3] A se pune piuă is to crouch so that someone can climb on one's back;^[10] Tiktin ties the phrase to the posture of the hammer of a stamp mill before it falls.^[2][4]

Timeline

• 1491 – the first record, from Drăganu.^[2]
• before 1588 – in a text of Hasdeu's Cuvente den bătrâni.^[3]
• 1688 – pio “mortar” in the Bucharest Bible (Numbers 11:8).^[2]
• 1870 – Costinescu glosses it as a mortar for pounding and a mortar for bombs.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fulling mill: a device or machine that felts woollen cloth in a warm, damp place.^[4][3][1]
2. A mortar: a vessel of wood, metal or stone with thick walls and bottom, in which things are pounded.^[4][3]
3. The part of a stamp mill in which ore is crushed.^[4][3]
4. A recess in a machine part that holds another part or lets it turn.^[4]
5. (old, regional) A mortar, a short cannon.^[4][11]

Word family

• piuar
• piuliță

Related words

• pisa
• Latin pīla

Usage notes

A bate apa în piuă “to beat water in the mortar” is to talk on and on to no purpose.^[3][11] A se pune piua (or în piuă) is to crouch so that someone can climb on one's back or be carried.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. piuă
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, 400
4. ^ 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. 824
5. ^ a b c d 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. piuă
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Graur, Alexandru (1975), Alte etimologii românești, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. piuă
8. ^ a b Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. piuă
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6496
10. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 298
11. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. piuă