roib

Forms

roib m or n (feminine singular roaibă, masculine plural roibi, feminine/neuter plural roaibe)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rubeus (“red, reddish”), also spelled robeus.^[2][3][1][4] The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian aroibu “chestnut horse”.^[5][2] Its Romance cognates include Old Italian robbio, Occitan roi, French rouge, Catalan roig and Spanish rubio.^[2][4]

The Latin adjective is formed on rubeō (“to be red”).^[1] Its doublet in Romanian is ruj, borrowed from French.^[1] The Romanian word was borrowed into Hungarian rojb.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to about 1625, in a letter in the Bistrița archives published by Rosetti: „un cal bun roibu” “a good chestnut horse”, sent as a gift.^[6][7] The New Testament of 1648 has „Și ieși alt cal roib” “and there went out another horse, a chestnut” in Revelation.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The word was always said of horses: “chestnut, sorrel”, and as a noun a chestnut horse.^[3][8] The dictionaries describe the colour as reddish, light red or reddish yellow, and DEX also as brown.^[8][3] Regional senses recorded by MDA2 and the linguistic atlas are “grey”, “red with white marks on the legs and forehead”, “nag” and “red-haired person”.^[8][7] In poetry the noun became a word for a fine steed, as in Coșbuc's Arabian who wants his roib admired.^[6][7]

Timeline

• c. 1625 – cal … roibu in a letter from the Bistrița archives.^[6][7]
• 1648 – cal roib in the New Testament of 1648.^[7]
• c. 1660 – iapă roaibă in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[7][9]
• 1688 – roib in the Bucharest Bible.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of horses: chestnut, sorrel, with a reddish or brown coat; the same as șarg.^[3][8][1]
2. (regional) Of horses: grey; red with white marks on the legs and forehead.^[8]

Noun

1. A chestnut or sorrel horse.^[3][1]
2. (regional) A nag; a red-haired person.^[8]

Related words

• ruj
• roibă
• Aromanian aroibu

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. roib
3. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 960
4. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7408
5. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 149
6. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. roib
7. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. roib
8. ^ 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, 721
9. ^ 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. roib
10. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Revelation 6:4