râpă

Forms

râpă f (plural râpe)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rīpa (“bank”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The Latin noun meant “river bank”;^[6] de Vaan and Wiktionary trace it to Proto-Indo-European *h₁réyp-eh₂ (“steep slope”), from *h₁reyp- (“to tear, tear down”).^[6][1]

The word is found in all four branches: Aromanian arîpă, Megleno-Romanian rǫpă and Istro-Romanian ărpĕ.^[2][7][8] Its Romance cognates include Italian riva, French rive, Catalan riba and Portuguese riba.^[2][9] Southern Transylvania has a variant ripă.^[2][3] Ciorănescu also notes the comparison, made by Philippide, with Albanian rip.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

DLR's first quotation is from the Romanian Herodotus of 1645: „era rîpi și dealuri” “there were ravines and hills”.^[10] A Slavonic–Romanian lexicon of about 1660 has rîpă for a steep place.^[11] MDA2 dates the word from Dosoftei's lives of the saints (1682–1686), which DLR quotes too.^[3][10]

Semantic evolution

In Romanian the word means a steep slope of a hill and a gully cut by torrents, not a river bank.^[4][10] The southern dialects shift it further: Aromanian arîpă is a precipice, Megleno-Romanian rǫpă a slope or a stone, and Istro-Romanian ărpĕ only “stone, rock”.^[7][9][8] A dialect of Reggio Emilia has a parallel sense, “steep place, rock”.^[9]

The phrase a (se) duce de râpă “to go to ruin” takes the steep slope as an image of decline.^[4][3] The word passed into Ukrainian as rypa “steep slope”.^[2][5]

Timeline

• 1645 – rîpi “ravines” in the Romanian Herodotus.^[10]
• c. 1660–1670 – rîpă and rîpe in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[11]
• 1682–1686 – rîpei in Dosoftei, MDA2's first record.^[3][10]
• 1688 – râpei in the Bucharest Bible.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. A steep slope of a hill; a gully or landslip cut by torrents; a ravine.^[4][3][1]

Word family

• râpos

Related words

• Aromanian arîpă

Usage notes

The plural is râpe, also râpi.^[4] A da de râpă or a se duce de râpă means “to be ruined, to fail”.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. rîpă
3. ^ 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, 659
4. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 923
5. ^ a b Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 131
6. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 144
8. ^ a b Popovici, Iosif (1909), Dialectele romîne din Istria II: texte și glosar, Halle a. S., p. 90
9. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7328
10. ^ 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. rîpă
11. ^ 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, p. s.v. rîpă
12. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Mt 8:32