prăjitură

Forms

prăjitură f (plural prăjituri)^[1] MDA2 records an old variant prăjătură and the regional pârjătură and prejitură.^[2] An old cookery book has „Peaştele... pune-l în tingire cu prăjătura” “put the fish in the pan with the hot fat”.^[3]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian prăji + -tură, from the verb prăji (“to fry”).^{[4][2][5][6][1]} The verb is from Old Church Slavonic пражити (pražiti), from Proto-Slavic *pražiti.^[7][6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon of 1649, where it glosses a Slavonic word.^[5][8] The early sense was “something fried”, and also fat heated for frying or a roux.^[3][9]

Semantic evolution

The old senses “roux, hot fat” and “fried food” survive only regionally.^[3][2] From the early 19th century the word was used for sweet pastries: a document of 1807 asks for a cook who can make prăjituri of every kind.^[3] This is now the main sense: a sweet cake or pastry served as dessert, sold in a cofetărie.^[4][10] Barițiu's Hungarian–Romanian dictionary of 1869 gives it, marked as the word used in Romania, among the equivalents of Hungarian tészta “pastry”.^[11]

Timeline

• 1649 – first record, in Mardarie's lexicon.^[5][8]
• 1807 – prăjituri “sweet pastries” in a document published by Iorga.^[3]
• 1869 – prăjitură “pastry” in Barițiu's dictionary.^[11]
• 1870 – in Costinescu's dictionary, as a round fried pastry.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cake or pastry made of flour, sugar, fat, eggs and other ingredients, usually eaten as a dessert.^[4][2][1]
2. (old or regional) Fat heated for frying; a roux.^[2][3]
3. (regional) Fried food.^[2][3]

Related words

• prăji

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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, 502
3. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. prăjitură
4. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 861
5. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. prăjitură
6. ^ a b 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. prăji
7. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 501
8. ^ a b 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. prăjitură
9. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 503
10. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1032
11. ^ a b Barițiu, George (1869), Dictionariu unguresc-romanescu, Brașov, p. 566
12. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 331