plasă

Forms

plasă f (plural plase)^[1] In the sense “administrative district” the plural is plăși as well as plase.^[2][1][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic пласа (plasa, “strip, band; zone”).^{[4][2][5][3][1]} Ciorănescu follows Cihac and Conev here.^[5] Scriban gives the Slavonic senses “net, zone, region” and compares Serbo-Croatian plasa and Russian полоса (polosá, “strip; region”).^[6]

The Slavonic word continues Proto-Slavic *polsa (“strip”),^[1][7] which goes back to Proto-Indo-European *polḱéh₂.^[1] Its relatives in the Slavic languages mean a strip of land or leather.^[7][8] The Bulgarian etymological dictionary records Skok's view that the Romanian word is hard to connect with its Serbo-Croatian counterpart.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the word to 1550, with the sense “net” for catching animals.^[3] MDA2's first record is from economic documents before 1802.^[2] A customs tariff of 1761 speaks of „cuțite cu plase de cerb” “knives with handles of deer horn”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The main sense is a net, for fish (the plasă drawn through water by two men) and for birds and game; from it come wire netting, the luggage rack of a train, the net behind a goal and on a tennis or volleyball court, and the string shopping bag.^[2][6][3] Expressions such as a prinde pe cineva în plasă “to trick or seduce someone” and a cădea în plasă “to fall into a trap” are figurative uses of the net.^[2][4]

The sense “district” is old: in medieval Wallachia a plasă was a share of an estate, and later a subdivision of a county, a subprefecture.^[4][5][3] Tiktin and Ciorănescu also record the senses “blade of a knife” (Dosoftei has „pre plase de her înfocate” “on red-hot iron blades”) and “handle”; the handles of swords and knives are usually the plural plăsele.^[3][5] In Oltenia it can mean the runner of a sledge.^[3]

The Bulgarian dialects of the Danube have plasa “fishing net; shopping bag”, which the Bulgarian etymological dictionary takes from Romanian.^[9]

Timeline

• 1550 – the first record according to Tiktin.^[3]
• 1761 – plase “knife handles” in a customs tariff.^[3]
• before 1802 – plasă in economic documents, MDA2's first record.^[2]
• 1870 – Costinescu has both the net and the administrative plasă, glossed with French arrondissement.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. Mesh or netting of textile, synthetic or metal threads; an object made of it.^[4][2]
2. A fishing net; a net for catching birds or animals.^[4][2][1]
3. The net behind a goal in football, handball, water polo or hockey, or across a volleyball or tennis court.^[4][2]
4. A string bag for carrying shopping.^[2][1]
5. (historical) In medieval Wallachia, the part of an estate owed to one owner.^[4]
6. (historical) A subdivision of a county (județ) in Romania's former administration (plural plase or plăși).^[4][1]
7. (rare) The blade of a knife.^[4][5]

Word family

• plăsea
• plăsela

Usage notes

DEX and MDA2 have a second word plasă (plural plese), a regional word for a course of a meal, from Modern Greek πλάσι (plási).^[4][2] DLR and MDA2 put the old Transylvanian senses “kind, sort, class” under that word too, with Petru Maior's de două plase “of two kinds”, while Ciorănescu and Tiktin list “type, class” under the Slavonic plasă and compare Aromanian plase.^{[11][2][5][3]}

The earliest psalter, the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, has a form plasele in Psalm 57,^[12] which Candrea's glossary of the Psaltirea Scheiană explains as “molar teeth”.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 406
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. plasă
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 828
5. ^ a b c d e f 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. plasă
6. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 992
7. ^ a b Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill
8. ^ Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress
9. ^ a b Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 5, 309
10. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 304
11. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. plasă
12. ^ 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
13. ^ Candrea, I.-A. (1916), Psaltirea Scheiană comparată cu celelalte psaltiri din sec. XVI și XVII traduse din slavonește, vol. II: Glosarele, București: Socec, p. 354