râie

Forms

râie f (uncountable)^[1] An old variant was răie.^[2][3] The Lexicon de la Buda (1825) spells it răe or râie.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin arānea (“spider; spider's web”), which Latin medical writers also used for a skin disease.^{[5][6][3][7][1]} The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian arãnji and Megleno-Romanian rănă.^[5][2][8][1] The other Romance languages have Italian rogna, French rogne, Spanish roña and Portuguese ronha, from Vulgar Latin *rōnea or *arōnea, a form of the same word altered, probably after rōdō (“to gnaw”);^{[5][9][10][11]} Nocentini notes that the unaltered form survives only at the edges of the Romance area, in Galician raña, in Romanian and in Megleno-Romanian.^[10] The Latin word is related to Ancient Greek ἀράχνη (arákhnē, “spider”), either as its source or from a common one.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1537, in a manorial register (urbarium) in Prodan's edition.^[2] MDA2's first record is the Romanian translation of Herodotus of 1645.^[3] The 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons gloss Slavonic krasta “scab” with râie from about 1660 on.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The core sense has stayed the contagious itching skin disease of people and animals, caused by a mite; the most severe form, common in goats, is râie căprească.^[6][3][2] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 uses it among the blemishes that bar a priest and the plagues of Deuteronomy.^[13][14] Figuratively it is a word of abuse for a troublesome person or animal, a pest.^[6][3] Regionally a face râie pe inimă means to be envious of something.^[3] Modern agriculture uses râia neagră a cartofului for a fungal disease of the potato.^[6]

Timeline

• 1537 – first record, in an urbarium.^[2]
• 1645 – râie in the Romanian Herodotus.^[3]
• 1652 – the verb râia “to catch the mange”.^[3]
• c. 1660 – râia glossing Slavonic krasta in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[12]
• 1688 – râie and the adjective râios in the Bucharest Bible.^[13][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (popular) scabies, mange: a contagious skin disease of people and animals caused by a mite, with itching sores, mostly between the fingers; scabie.^[6][3]
2. (figurative) A term of abuse for a person or animal that causes much trouble; a pest, pacoste.^[6][3]
3. (in râia neagră a cartofului) A fungal disease of the potato that causes soft dark growths on its tubers.^[6]

Word family

• râios
• râia

Related words

• mușuroi
• Aromanian arãnji
• Latin arānea

Usage notes

The expression se ține ca râia de om “it sticks to one like the mange” is said of someone one cannot get rid of.^[6][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. râie
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 655
4. ^ 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. 573
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. râie
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. 922
7. ^ Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 130
8. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net)
9. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
10. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. rogne
12. ^ 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
13. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Leviticus 21:20
14. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Deuteronomy 28:27