poștă

Forms

poștă f (plural poște)^[1] Old and regional forms include posta, poștie, poște and pocită;^[2][3] Beldiman wrote pocită.^[2][3] The rare plural poști occurs beside poște: „sînt două poști bune” “it is a good two posts”.^[3]

Etymology

It is a word of multiple origin: MDA2 and DLR name borrowed from Russian почта (počta), German Post, Hungarian posta and French poste.^[4][3] Tiktin also calls it multiple and compares Italian posta, Polish poczta and Serbo-Croatian pošta with the Russian, Hungarian and French words.^[2] Wiktionary and Gabinschi trace a single path: Russian, from Polish (older form poszta), from Italian;^[1][5] Graur also has it come through Polish and Russian.^[1][5][6] Tamás notes that the Slavic explanation is the usual one, but holds that this wandering word must also have had a Hungarian source.^[7] The Hungarian word, recorded since the 16th century, comes from Medieval Latin posta.^[7] MDN gives German and French only.^[8]

The Italian word is from Latin posita (“fixed”), said of a mānsiō (“stopping place”), the feminine past participle of pōnō (“to put, place”): the name of the stations where horses and couriers were changed.^[9][1][10] The German word was borrowed from Italian in the 16th century.^[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1593, under the form posta, in the documents published in the DIR collection.^[2] MDA2's first record is a document of 1790 in Iorga's Studii și documente.^[4] A letter of 1799 in the same collection mentions the cost of the post: „Trimisei dumitale și un sfanțih pentru creițarii poștii, pă care-l pusei în plic” “I also sent you a zwanziger for the post's kreuzers, which I put in the envelope”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Until the railways, the poștă was the relay service that carried travellers and letters by coach; the word also named the station on the road where horses were changed, as in Beldiman: „Ceilalți au mas la poșta de la Oncești” “the others stayed at the post station of Oncești”.^[3][2] The distance between two stations became a unit of length, which varied between about 10 and 22 km;^[4][12] Scriban gives 19.66 km in Wallachia and 22.3 km in Moldavia.^[4][12] It is common in 19th-century writers as a measure of distance, and cale de-o poștă still means “a long way off”.^[3][13] The modern sense, the public institution that carries letters and parcels and its office, grew out of the relay service.^[13][4] Colloquial uses include a umbla cu poșta “to carry gossip”, cal de poștă “a person run off their feet”, and poște, the burning scraps of paper put between a sleeper's toes as a prank in Creangă.^[2][13][3] Poșta merge is the name of a children's game.^[3]

Timeline

• 1593 – posta, the first record, in a document.^[2]
• 1790 – in a document published by Iorga.^[4]
• 1799 – creițarii poștii “the post's kreuzers”, in a letter.^[3]
• 1802 – poșta rusească “the Russian post”.^[3]
• 1814 – postă for a relay station on the road.^[3]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda glosses it with Latin cursus publicus and German Post.^[14]
• 1832 – „La patru poștii din București” “four posts from Bucharest”, as a measure of distance.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. The post: the public institution that carries and delivers letters and parcels; a post office;^[13][4] de poștă “postal”.^[13][4]
2. mail, correspondence;^[13] poșta redacției “letters to the editor”, a column in a periodical.^[13]
3. (historical) The relay service that carried travellers and mail by stagecoach; the station where horses were changed;^[13][4] cal de poștă “post horse”.^[13][4]
4. (historical) A unit of distance of about 20 km;^[13][4] (colloquial) a long distance.^[13][4]

Word family

• poștar
• poștaș

Related words

• poștalion
• poștal
• poștăriță

Usage notes

DEX has a second poștă, only a variant of the regional poștie “large shot, buckshot”, which it compares with Hungarian posta.^[13][3] Tamás takes this Hungarian word from German Posten, so it is unrelated to the post.^[15] DLR also has two regional words spelled poștă: “thick board, door frame”, from German Pfosten, and “overseer of the timber chute”, from German Posten “sentry”.^[3][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. poștă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. poștă
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 485
5. ^ a b Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 148
6. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică
7. ^ a b Tamás, Lajos (1966), Etymologisch-historisches Wörterbuch der ungarischen Elemente im Rumänischen, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 637
8. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. poștă
9. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ a b Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 717
11. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
12. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1025
13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 856
14. ^ 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.), p. 529
15. ^ Tamás, Lajos (1966), Etymologisch-historisches Wörterbuch der ungarischen Elemente im Rumänischen, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 638