prier

Forms

prier m (uncountable)^[1] The oldest record has priere: „în luna lui priere a șapteasprădzeace zi” “in the month of April, on the seventeenth day” (before 1600).^[2][3] Regional variants include preer in Oltenia, prier, priil, priir and prie.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin Aprīlis (“April”), the popular name of the month beside the learned aprilie.^{[5][2][3][6][7][1]} Candrea–Densusianu derive it through the stages ⟨*aprire⟩, with Latin /l/ becoming /r/ between vowels, and ⟨*prir(e)⟩, but find the sound shape not fully explained.^[4] Wiktionary sees in it either a metathesis of an unattested ⟨*prire⟩ or a blend of that form with the archaic ⟨prie⟩.^[1] Scriban thinks it was influenced by grier.^[8] Ciorănescu refers to Graur for the phonetics.^[5]

Aromanian has aprir and april.^[9] Ciorănescu lists Megleno-Romanian pril' as a cognate,^[5] but Candrea–Densusianu take that form from Modern Greek.^[4] Cihac and Candrea–Densusianu compare Albanian prill,^[7][4] which Wiktionary takes from Latin as well.^[1] The Romance forms include Italian aprile, French avril, Spanish abril and Portuguese abril.^[10][4]

The origin of the Latin name is disputed: de Vaan connects it with ab (“away from”), as “the following” month, the second of the old Roman year,^[11] while Wiktionary suggests an Etruscan form of the name of Aphrodite.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in a text of before 1600 printed in Hasdeu's Cuvente den bătrâni: „Voiu deșchide ceriul de voiu lăsa o ploaie de foc în luna lui priere a șapteasprădzeace zi” “I will open the sky and let down a rain of fire in the month of April, on the seventeenth day”.^[2][3] The Ieud manuscript of about 1630 has „Și vo(iu) avea a ploa în luna lui prier” “and I will make it rain in the month of April”.^[12][13]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its one sense, the month of April.^[2][3] Nicolae Costin's chronicle dates an event „în luna lui prier” “in the month of April”, and the dictionaries of Klein and of Buda give it as the Romanian name of the month.^[2][14][15] By 1870 Costinescu called it the name the villagers gave to April.^[16] Marian lists prier and sometimes florariu as the folk names of April.^[2] Writers took it up as a poetic word: Bolliac, Delavrancea and Blaga, whose line runs „Amurg fecund de prier” “fertile April dusk”.^[2] DEX now marks it dated and popular.^[6]

Timeline

• before 1600 – priere in a text printed in Hasdeu's Cuvente den bătrâni, the first record.^[2][3]
• c. 1630 – prier in the Ieud manuscript.^[12]
• 1801 – Klein glosses it “the month of April”.^[14]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda.^[15]
• 1870 – Costinescu calls it the villagers' name for April.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. (dated, popular) April, the fourth month of the year.^{[6][17][3][18]}

Related words

• aprilie
• Aromanian aprir

Usage notes

The stress is also príer.^[6] MDA2 and the DLR have a separate prier, a neuter noun that is a variant of proor.^[3][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. prier
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 536
4. ^ a b c d e Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. prier
5. ^ a b c 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. prier
6. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 874
7. ^ a b Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 13
8. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1048
9. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 35
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 562
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b Ștef, Dorin (2011), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din Maramureș, Baia Mare: Ethnologica, p. s.v. prier
13. ^ Ștef, Dorin (2021), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din județul Maramureș, 3rd ed., Baia Mare, p. s.v. priér
14. ^ a b Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 425
15. ^ a b 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. 544
16. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 354
17. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. prier
18. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 567