poarcă

Forms

poarcă f (plural poarce)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin porca (“sow”), the feminine of porcus (“pig”).^[2][3][4][1] Pușcariu and the REW give the same etymon.^[2][5]

The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian poarcã, Megleno-Romanian poarcă and Istro-Romanian porke.^[2][6] Its Romance cognates include Italian porca, Catalan porca, Portuguese porca and Spanish puerca.^[2][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to about 1500.^[6] MDA2 dates it from Bobb's dictionary (Cluj, 1822), where it means “sow”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In the sense “sow”, a synonym of scroafă, the word is popular and rare.^[4][7] Its main life is in a children's game, de-a poarca: one player, the porcar “swineherd”, drives the “sow”, a ball or a round bone, with a stick towards a hole, while the others try to knock it away;^[6][4] Tiktin explains it as the swineherd driving the sow to the beechmast.^[6][4] From the game the word passed to the ball or bone itself, and a bate poarca “to beat the sow” means to play it.^[3][4] In slang a bate poarca also came to mean playing truant.^[3] In Oltenia (Gorj) the word names the bunghole of a barrel.^[6][7][8] The REW knew the Romanian word only as the name of the game.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1500 – the first record, in a text Tiktin dates to about 1500.^[6]
• 1822 – poarcă “sow” in Bobb's dictionary.^[3]
• 1857 – Polizu lists it for “sow”.^[8]
• 1939 – Scriban describes the game and records the sense “bunghole” in Gorj.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. (popular) A sow, a female pig.^[4][3][1]
2. A children's game in which one player drives a ball or bone with a stick towards a hole while the others try to stop it; also the ball or bone used in it: băieții jucau poarca pe maidan “the boys were playing poarca on the waste ground”.^[4][3]
3. (regional, Oltenia) The bunghole of a barrel.^[3][7]

Related words

• porc
• porcar
• purcea
• Aromanian poarcã

Usage notes

A second, unrelated poarcă “worn-out hat or cap”, recorded in north-eastern Oltenia from 1951, is of unknown origin; the DLR compares pearcă.^[8][3] A bate poarca is “to play the game” and, in slang, “to skip school”.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. porc
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 433
4. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 838
5. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6656
6. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. poarcă
7. ^ a b c d Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1002
8. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. poarcă