rahat

Forms

rahat n (plural rahaturi)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ottoman Turkish راحت (rahat, “rest, comfort”), from Arabic رَاحَة (rāḥa, “rest, ease”).^[1][2][3] Nişanyan derives the Arabic noun from the verb أراح (arāḥa, “to take breath”), from روح (rūḥ, “breath”).^[4][5]

The old sense was comfort and ease; in the sense of the sweet the word stands for the longer Turkish name, borrowed whole as rahatlocum.^[2][6][7][8] The same Turkish word is Aromanian rihate (“rest, ease”), Modern Greek ραχάτι (raxáti, “idleness, leisure”), Bulgarian рахат (rahat, “calm, ease”) and Serbo-Croatian rahat.^[2][9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the word to 1793, from a text quoted by Șăineanu.^[6] Beldiman's verse chronicle of the Greek uprising (1821) has it in the old sense: „să șează cu tot rahatul lor” “to sit at their ease”.^[3][6][11]

Semantic evolution

The comfort sense is now obsolete.^[3][2] The name of the sweet is recorded from 1857 in Polizu's dictionary.^[3] From the sweet came the familiar senses “worthless thing” and, with a masculine plural, the euphemism for excrement, which Tiktin already lists.^[6][7] MDA2 records many colloquial phrases built on it, such as rahat cu apă rece “nonsense” and a se face de rahat “to make a fool of oneself”.^[3][6] Derivatives name the trade: rahagiu “seller of rahat” and rahagerie “sweetshop”.^[2]

Timeline

• 1793 – the first record, in a text quoted by Șăineanu.^[6]
• 1821 – “comfort, ease” in Beldiman's chronicle of the Greek uprising.^[3][11]
• 1857 – the sweet, in Polizu's Romanian–German dictionary.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Turkish delight: a jelly-like sweet of sugar syrup, starch and flavourings, usually cut into small cubes.^[7][1]
2. (figurative, familiar) A worthless thing, a trifle.^[7][3]
3. (familiar, vulgar) excrement; with the plural rahați.^[7][6]
4. (obsolete) Comfort, ease.^[3][2][11]

Word family

• rahagiu
• rahagerie

Related words

• rahatlocum
• Aromanian rihate

Usage notes

The sweet has the neuter plural rahaturi; the vulgar sense takes the masculine plural rahați.^[7][3]

References

1. ^ a b c 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. rahat
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 621
4. ^ Nişanyan, Sevan, Nişanyan Sözlük: Çağdaş Türkçenin Etimolojisi (online edition)
5. ^ Tietze, Andreas (2002–2018), Tarihi ve Etimolojik Türkiye Türkçesi Lugatı, Istanbul: Simurg; Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences
6. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. rahat
7. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 910
8. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 530
9. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας, p. 1266
10. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 6, 191
11. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. rahat