plumbos

Forms

plumbos m or n (feminine singular plumboasă, masculine plural plumboși, feminine/neuter plural plumboase)^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian plumb + -os, from plumb (“lead”) with the adjective suffix.^[2][3][1] Scriban and Cihac compare Latin plumbōsus (“full of lead”), and the Lexicon of Buda gave the Latin word as its equivalent in 1825.^[4][5][6] Marcu gives French plombeux as its source, and Wiktionary allows that the sense “containing lead” may partly follow the French word.^[7][1] The Latin word is formed on plumbum (“lead”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Ioan Bobb's Romanian–Latin–Hungarian dictionary (Cluj, 1822), in the sense “containing lead”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The Lexicon of Buda (1825) defines plumbosu as full of lead, containing much lead, with Latin plumbosus and German voll Bley.^[6] Costinescu (1870) adds the sense “heavy as lead”.^[9] The figurative sense “heavy, dull, clumsy”, said of verses, is recorded by Scriban.^[4][3] In the modern language it is a technical synonym of plumbifer.^[2][7]

Timeline

• 1822 – plumbos “containing lead” in Bobb's dictionary, the first record.^[2]
• 1825 – plumbosu in the Lexicon of Buda.^[6]
• 1870 – Costinescu gives “heavy as lead”.^[9]
• 1939 – Scriban records the figurative “heavy, dull”.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Containing lead or of the nature of lead; plumbiferous.^[2][3][1]
2. (figurative) Heavy, clumsy, dull: un stil plumbos “a leaden style”.^[2][4][1]

Related words

• plumb
• plumbar

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 428
3. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. plumbos
4. ^ a b c d Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1001
5. ^ Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 211
6. ^ a b c Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.)
7. ^ a b Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. plumbos
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci