refeca

Forms

refeca (third-person singular present refecă, past participle refecat) 1st conjugation^[1] The third person singular is also refeacă, old and regional: „face nădragi … și refeacă obielele” “makes trousers … and hems the foot-cloths” (Jipescu).^[2][3] Regional variants are răfeca, refreca and răfica, recorded by the linguistic atlas.^[2][4]

Etymology

Its origin is unknown.^[5][1] DEX, DLR and MDA2 only compare Latin refricō (“to rub again”).^[6][2][4] Pușcariu and the REW derived the verb from that Latin word, Candrea from Vulgar Latin *orificō, formed on ōrificium (“opening”), with Portuguese refegar compared, and Tiktin from Vulgar Latin *reficcō (“to fasten”), compare Italian ficcare;^[1] Ciorănescu finds none of them convincing.^[5][1] Tiktin argues that the oldest record, răfrecătură glossing a Serbian word for “hem” about 1600, already has the modern sense and not the “patch” that Hasdeu and Pușcariu assumed, which tells against the Latin verb for rubbing; for his own proposal he takes the second ⟨r⟩ of ⟨răfrec-⟩ as inserted.^[3] Cihac's Slavic source is very unlikely.^[5]

The verb also exists south of the Danube: Aromanian arufec, meaning “to hem”, and in Aromanian also “to cut with scissors”.^[7][8][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to about 1600: a glossary published by Hasdeu has răfrecul and răfrecătură beside the Serbian word for “hem” and a Slavonic word for hemming.^[3] MDA2 gives its first record from Polizu's Romanian–German dictionary of 1857.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The sense “to sew with a felled seam” widened to “to hem”.^[4][2] In the regional speech recorded by Rădulescu-Codin it is also figurative, a lua pe cineva la refec “to give someone a dressing-down”, and MDA2 has refeca itself for “to scold harshly”.^[2][4] A technical sense of carpentry, trimming the bevelled edges of rough boards with a saw, is recorded in the modern dictionaries.^[2][6] The noun refec “seam, hem” also took the sense “quarrel, scolding”.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1600 – răfrecul, răfrecătură in a Slavonic–Romanian glossary.^[3]
• 1857 – refeca in Polizu's dictionary.^[4][2]
• 1862 – refeca “to border, hem” in Pontbriant's dictionary.^[9]

Meanings

Verb

1. To sew with a refec (a felled seam); by extension, to hem.^[6][4][3]
2. (regional, figurative) To scold someone harshly.^[4]
3. To trim off the bevelled edges of rough boards with a saw, so that they become regular planks.^[6][2]

Word family

• refec
• refecătură

Related words

• Aromanian arufec

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 (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. refeca
3. ^ 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. refeca
4. ^ 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, 676
5. ^ a b c d e 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. refeca
6. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 934
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 153
8. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 131
9. ^ Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 616