poartă

Forms

poartă f (plural porți)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin porta (“gate, door”).^{[2][3][4][5][6][1]} The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian poartă, Megleno-Romanian poartă and Istro-Romanian poartę.^[2][7] The Romance cognates include Italian porta, Occitan porta, Catalan porta, Portuguese porta, French porte, Spanish puerta and Dalmatian puarta.^[2][8]

De Vaan reconstructs a Proto-Italic noun for “gate, door” and relates it to Latin portus (“harbour”) and to a Proto-Indo-European participle meaning “crossed”.^[9] Wiktionary gives the root as Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to pass through”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1470, from a document.^[5] In Romanian texts MDA2 has it first in Coresi's book of homilies of 1581.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The core sense is an opening in a wall or fence with the leaves that close it, and by extension the entrance to a fortress, town or village.^[4][3] Mountain passes and narrow river gorges are also called gates, as in the Iron Gates of the Danube, Porțile de Fier.^[4][5]

In the Ottoman period the word named the residence or court of the sultan or of a pasha, and so the Ottoman government itself, Poarta or Înalta Poartă, “the Sublime Porte”.^[4][2] Tiktin quotes this sense from the old chronicles, among them Nicolae Costin and Muste.^[5] The modern sporting sense is the goal in football, handball or hockey.^[4][1]

Timeline

• 1470 – the first record, in a document.^[5]
• 1581 – poartă in Coresi's book of homilies.^[3]
• 1660s – porțile in the Slavonic–Romanian lexicons.^[10]
• 1688 – porțile “the gates” in the Bucharest Bible (Nehemiah 7:3).^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A gate: an opening in a wall or fence closed by hinged leaves; the leaves themselves.^[4][3]
2. The entrance to a fortress, town or village; figuratively, a way of access, a means.^[4][3]
3. The main door of a building; by extension a house, a household: din poartă în poartă “from house to house”.^[4]
4. (sports) The goal in football, handball, hockey and similar games.^[4][1]
5. A narrow valley or gorge through which a river passes; a mountain pass.^[4]
6. (historical) The court of the sultan or of a pasha; the Ottoman government, the Sublime Porte.^[4][2]

Word family

• portiță
• portar
• portăreasă
• portărel
• portărie

Related words

• Latin porta
• port

Usage notes

Poartă-n poartă means “face to face, across the street”, and a bate la toate porțile “to knock at every door, to ask everyone for help”.^[4] MDA2 also has two rare regional homographs: one for a big ugly horse, of unknown origin, and a Transylvanian word for a river bank, from Hungarian part.^[3][11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. poartă
3. ^ a b c d e f g 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 h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 838
5. ^ 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. poartă
6. ^ Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 118
7. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 228
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6671
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. porțile
11. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. poartă