porumbă

Forms

porumbă f (plural porumbe)^[1] Regional variants are porâmbă in Banat, poroabă in Gorj and Hațeg and poroambă in Mehedinți.^[2][3]

Etymology

DEX takes the word for the sloe directly as inherited from Latin palumba (“wood pigeon”), and MDA2 from a Latin *polumba.^[4][3] Candrea and Densusianu started from a diminutive *palumbula, with dissimilation of /l/.^[2] Wiktionary and Scriban take it from porumb “dove; bluish grey”, itself from palumbus.^[5][1] All agree on the motive: the fruit is named after the bluish colour of the pigeon.^[2][1]

Tiktin's study of the adjective “bluish grey” and its sense “sloe” is cited by the REW.^[6] The same naming is seen in Albanian kullumbri (“sloe”), from columba (“dove”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2's first record of the fruit is Polizu's Romanian–German dictionary of 1857.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word names the small round blue-black fruit of the blackthorn, porumbar, sour and astringent.^[4][7] Scriban gives it as a southern word.^[5] Candrea and Densusianu compared names of other bluish fruits taken from the pigeon, in Italian and Provençal dialects.^[2]

Timeline

• 1857 – porumbă “sloe” in Polizu's dictionary, the first record.^[3]
• 1885 – porumbă “female dove” in Teodorescu's folk poems.^[8][9]

Meanings

Noun

1. sloe: the round, blue-black, sour fruit of the blackthorn (porumbar); scoroambă.^[4][1]

Word family

• porumbar

Usage notes

The proverb râde dracul de porumbe negre (și pe sine nu se vede) “the devil laughs at black sloes and does not see himself” is said of those who mock others' faults.^[7][5] DEX records a second, popular porumbă “female dove”, formed on porumb.^[4][9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. porumbă
3. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 477
4. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 853
5. ^ a b c Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1021
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6181
7. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 510
8. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 478
9. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. porumbă