pulpă

Forms

pulpă f (plural pulpe)^[1] An old plural pulpi appears beside pulpe; the diminutive is pulpișoară.^[2][3] MDA2 also lists the regional variants polpă and pulp.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin pulpa (“fleshy part of the body, lean meat”).^{[4][5][2][6][1]} It survives in all four branches: Aromanian pulpă, Megleno-Romanian pulpă and Istro-Romanian pupę.^[4][7][8][9] Its cognates include Italian polpa, Occitan polpa, Portuguese polpa and Old French poupe, and Albanian pulpjë has been compared.^[4][5] In Occitan and Catalan, as in Romanian, the word came to mean “calf of the leg”.^[5]

The senses “pulp of a fruit” and “dental pulp” were taken in modern times from French pulpe.^[4][6][3] The Latin word goes back to an older *pelpa, as Umbrian pelmner (“of meat”) shows.^[10] Wiktionary traces it further to Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“flour, dust”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word appears first in names: Tiktin cites the personal name Pulpe and the place name Pulpeștii from Slavonic-Romanian documents of 1495.^[2] MDA2 dates the first Romanian text to the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578), where the psalm says that God takes no pleasure in the pulpele “legs” of a man (Psalm 146:10).^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

The Latin sense “flesh, lean meat” became in Romanian the calf of the leg.^[4][5] In Wallachia the word is also used for the thigh, a widespread extension that Ciorănescu calls incorrect.^[4][3] Of an animal it means a leg as meat, and in general lean meat.^[3] In Moldavia and the Banat it also means an udder.^[2][4]

The learned senses came in from French: the fleshy part of a fruit, the soft tissue inside a tooth, and in industry the residue of sugar beet and other plants, used as fodder.^[4][6][11]

Timeline

• 1495 – the personal name Pulpe and the place name Pulpeștii.^[2]
• c. 1573–1578 – pulpele “the legs” in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[3][2]
• c. 1660–1670 – pulpele in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[12]
• 1688 – pulpele in the Bucharest Bible.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. The calf: the muscular back part of the leg between the knee and the ankle; the part of the leg where these muscles are.^[6][3][1]
2. (regional) The thigh; of an animal, a leg as meat.^[3][4]
3. Soft tissue rich in vessels and nerves;^[6] pulpă dentară “dental pulp”.^[6]
4. The fleshy, edible part of some fruits.^[6]
5. A residue of the sugar industry, of distilleries and of starch making, used as fodder.^[6]
6. (regional) An udder.^[2][4]

Word family

• pulpar
• pulpos
• împulpa
• pulpișoară

Related words

• Aromanian pulpă
• Latin pulpa

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. púlpă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 595
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. pulpă
5. ^ a b c d Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6834
6. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 896
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 892
8. ^ 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, 148
9. ^ Popovici, Iosif (1909), Dialectele romîne din Istria II: texte și glosar, Halle a. S., p. 142
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1074
12. ^ 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. pulpele
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ps 146:11