puț

Forms

puț n (plural puțuri)^[1] An old rare variant is poț.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin puteus (“well, pit”).^{[3][2][4][5][6][7][1]} Wiktionary links the Latin word with Proto-Indo-European *paw- (“to strike”); de Vaan finds this impossible because of the short ⟨u⟩, and thinks the Latin word may be a loanword.^[1][8]

The word survives south of the Danube as Aromanian puț and Istro-Romanian put.^[3][9][10] The Romance cognates include Italian pozzo, Sardinian puzzu, Occitan pous, French puits, Catalan pou, Spanish pozo and Portuguese poço; Albanian pus is compared too.^[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is a Slavonic-language document of 1497.^[4] In Romanian texts it appears in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century.^[11] Coresi's Evanghelie cu învățătură of 1581 has „puțul lui Iacov” “Jacob's well”.^[5][2]

Semantic evolution

The basic sense is a dug well for drinking water, the meaning of the Latin word.^[5][12] In the 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons it glosses Slavonic words for a well.^[13] Mining and the oil industry extended it to a shaft that links a deposit with the surface and to a borehole for oil.^[12][2] The derivative puțar means a well digger and, later, a worker at an oil well; the REW takes it straight from Latin putearius, while Ciorănescu forms it in Romanian.^[3][7]

Proverbial phrases include a căra apă la puț “to carry water to the well”, for a useless effort, and a cădea din lac în puț “to fall from the lake into the well”, for escaping one trouble only to meet a worse one.^[2][4]

Timeline

• 1497 – recorded in a Slavonic-language document.^[4]
• c. 1500–1520 – puț in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[11]
• 1581 – „puțul lui Iacov” in Coresi's Evanghelie cu învățătură.^[5][2]
• 1649 – in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[13]
• 1688 – „puțul este adânc” “the well is deep” in the Bucharest Bible.^[14][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A well: a pit dug down to a layer of water, often lined with stone, for drinking water; also fântână: puț absorbant “soakaway”, puț colector “collecting well”.^[12][2][1]
2. A shaft in a mine that links the deposit with the surface or a main gallery, for hauling, ventilation or access.^[12][2]
3. A hole drilled to extract petroleum, an oil well.^[12][2][1]

Word family

• puțar

Related words

• epuiza
• Latin puteus

Usage notes

A separate puț, from German putz, is a shout used in Bukovina to set dogs on someone.^[2][5]

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, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 611
3. ^ 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. puț
4. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. puț
5. ^ a b c d e Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. puț
6. ^ a b Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 125
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6877
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. puteus
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 901
10. ^ Popovici, Iosif (1909), Dialectele romîne din Istria II: texte și glosar, Halle a. S., p. 142
11. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 68:19
12. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 902
13. ^ 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. puț
14. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. John 4:11