pulbere

Forms

pulbere f (plural pulberi)^[1] Regional variants include pulbăr, pulbăre, pulbire and pulvere.^[2] Scriban gives púlbăr, a neuter noun, as the form used in Serbia.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pulverem (“dust”), the accusative case of the Latin noun.^{[4][2][5][6][7][1][8]} Aromanian has pulbire.^[4][9][10] The Romance cognates include Dalmatian pulvro, Italian polvere, Occitan poldra, French poudre, Spanish pólvora and Portuguese pólvora.^[4] A form with metathesis lies behind Albanian pluhur and Sardinian piùere.^[4][11]

The Latin word is traditionally traced to Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“flour, dust”).^[1] De Vaan derives it rather from a word for chaff, but notes that the link in meaning is uncertain.^[12] pudră “face powder”, taken from the French word, is a doublet.^[1][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Codicele Voronețean, where the crowd throws dust into the air: „pulbere ... vărsindu spre văzduhu”.^[7] The Psaltirea Scheiană has it in the first psalm: „ca pulberea ce o mătură vântul” “like the dust that the wind sweeps away”.^[6][7] MDA2 gives the New Testament of 1648 as its first record.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The basic sense, “dust”, has been constant since the 16th century.^[7][6] Scriban called the word old, still current in Oltenia and rare in the east, where colb and praf are the usual words.^[3] The sense “gunpowder” is recorded in the 19th century: Barițiu gives pulbere beside iarbă de pușcă for Hungarian puskapor, and Tiktin finds it in Laurian and Massim.^[14][6] DEX now labels it obsolete, beside a modern technical sense, a granular explosive.^[5] From the gunpowder sense came pulberărie “powder factory, powder magazine”, recorded from 1871.^[15] Recent slang uses the word for heroin or cocaine.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1563-1583 – pulbere “dust” in the Codicele Voronețean, the first record.^[7]
• c. 1573-1578 – pulberea in the Psaltirea Scheiană (Psalm 1:4).^[6]
• 1648 – pulbere in the New Testament, MDA2's first record.^[2]
• 1869 – “gunpowder” in Barițiu's Hungarian–Romanian dictionary.^[14]
• 1871 – pulberărie “powder magazine”.^[15]
• 1900 – the verb împulbera “to cover with dust”.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. dust, powder: a solid in the form of fine particles.^[5][2][1]
2. (figurative) With de, a great number, a host.^[5]
3. (obsolete) gunpowder.^[5][1]
4. An explosive in the form of threads or grains.^[5]
5. (slang) Heroin or cocaine.^[16]

Word family

• pulberărie
• împulbera

Related words

• spulbera
• pudră
• Aromanian pulbire
• Latin pulvis

Usage notes

Common phrases: a se face praf și pulbere “to be utterly destroyed”, a ridica pe cineva din pulbere “to raise someone from nothing” and a face pulberea praf “to achieve nothing”.^[5][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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, 594
3. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1074
4. ^ 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. pulbere
5. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 896
6. ^ 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. púlbere
7. ^ 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. pulbere
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6842
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
10. ^ 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
11. ^ Demiraj, Bardhyl (ed.), Digitales philologisch-etymologisches Wörterbuch des Albanischen, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
12. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 148
14. ^ a b Barițiu, George (1869), Dictionariu unguresc-romanescu, Brașov, p. 456
15. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. pulberăríe
16. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. pulbere
17. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1197