râma

Forms

râma (third-person singular present râmă, past participle râmat) 1st conjugation^[1] Old texts have rima; regional forms are ruma and a present râmez.^[2][3] Coresi's psalter renders Psalm 7:16 „Pârău rim și săpă și căzu în groapă ce feace” “he dug a pit and hollowed it, and fell into the hole he had made”.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rīmō (“to probe, search; to turn up the soil”), the active form of rīmor.^{[4][5][2][6][1][7]} The Latin verb is formed on rīma (“crack, fissure”).^[8] It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian arãm and Megleno-Romanian rǫm.^[4][9][10] Ciorănescu compares Italian rumare (Tuscan), Occitan rimar, Catalan rimar, Spanish rimar and Old French rimée (“crack, breach”), and, after Philippide, Albanian rëmoń; he finds a connection with curma and dărâma doubtful.^[4]

râmă “earthworm” is usually taken as a back-formation from the verb (Tiktin, REW, Candrea); Ciorănescu prefers Ancient Greek ῥόμος (rhómos, “woodworm”) for it.^[4][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are in the 16th-century psalters: Psalm 7:16 in the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578) and in Coresi, where the wicked man digs a pit and falls into it.^[2][3][6] Varlaam warns against living like swine, „cum am râma în pământ” “as if we were rooting in the ground”.^[6]

Semantic evolution

From “to dig” the verb narrowed to the rooting of pigs with their snouts, which is its main sense today.^[2][5][6] A figurative use is a thought that gnaws at someone: Ispirescu wrote „pe mine mă râma la inimă să știu” “it gnawed at my heart to know”.^[3][11][5] NODEX adds a familiar sense, to dig into someone's past for compromising facts.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1573–1578 – rimă “dug” in the Psaltirea Scheiană, the first record.^[2][6]
• 1825 – the noun râmătură in the Lexicon de la Buda.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, of pigs) To root: to turn up the ground with the snout; scurma.^[5][2]
2. (transitive and intransitive) To dig or rummage in the ground.^[2][6]
3. (transitive, popular; in a râma la inimă) Of a thought: to torment someone.^[5][2]
4. (transitive, familiar) To dig into someone's past for compromising facts.^[12]

Word family

• râmător
• râmătură

Related words

• râmă
• Aromanian arãm
• Latin rīmor

References

1. ^ a b c d 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, 655
3. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. râma
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. râma
5. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 922
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. râma
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net)
10. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
11. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
12. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. râma
13. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 656