purcel

Forms

purcel m (plural purcei, feminine equivalent purcea)^[1] MDA2 records the variant pârcel.^[2] The diminutives are purceluș, purceluț and purcelaș; the feminine is purcea, in Moldavia also purcică.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin porcellus (“piglet”), a diminutive of porcus (“pig”).^{[4][5][6][7][1]} It survives south of the Danube as Aromanian purțel, Megleno-Romanian purțoi and Istro-Romanian porce.^[4][8][9] Its Romance cognates include Italian porcello, Occitan porsel, Catalan porsel and French pourceau.^[4][5][10] In several Romance areas the diminutive took the place of the plain word.^[5] Romanian kept both: porc continues the plain Latin word.^[4]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *pórḱ-o- (“digger, pig”), the source also of Lithuanian paršas.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1479, from the Slavonic-Romanian documents, and lists the personal name Purcelescul in 1429.^[3] In a Romanian text it first appears in Moxa's chronicle (1620), which tells of a sow that bore thirty purcei at once.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its sense “piglet”, extended to a young pig and to its meat.^[6][2] The rhyming phrase cu cățel, cu purcel means “with all one's belongings”, and also “with all the family”.^[7][2] Tiktin and Ciorănescu also record the sense “ink blot”.^[3][4] Purcel-de-India is the guinea pig.^[2]

Timeline

• 1479 – the first record of the word, in a Slavonic-Romanian document.^[3]
• 1620 – purcei “piglets” in Moxa's chronicle.^[2][6]
• c. 1660–1670 – in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[12]
• 1715 – purceii cei mici “the little piglets” in a document.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. piglet: the young of a sow, usually until it is weaned; by extension, a young pig.^[7][2][1]
2. pork from a young pig.^[2][6]
3. An ink blot.^[3][4]

Word family

• purcea
• purceli
• purceluș

Related words

• porc
• Aromanian purțel

Usage notes

Cu cățel, cu purcel “with everything one owns” is a fixed phrase.^[7] Colloquial a lua purceaua de coadă “to take the young sow by the tail” means “to get drunk”.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 602
3. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. purcél
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. purcel
5. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6660
6. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. purcel
7. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 899
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 898
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, 146
10. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1077
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. ^ 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. purcel