rost

Forms

rost n (plural rosturi)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rōstrum (“beak, snout”).^{[2][3][4][5][1][6]} It survives as Aromanian arostu “mouth; shed of the loom”.^[2][7] The Romance cognates are Italian rostro, Spanish rostro “face”, Catalan rostre and Portuguese rosto “face”.^[2][5][6] Scriban explains the Latin word from rōdō (“to gnaw”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record, in MDA2 and the DLR, is the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of about 1500, where it means the mouth: „cu rostulu său blagosloviră” “with their mouth they blessed”.^[3][9] Coresi's psalter of 1570 still has it for the mouth (Psalm 113:13, “they have mouths but speak not”).^[10]

Semantic evolution

From the beak of Latin the word passed to the mouth, the sense of the old texts;^[11][3] Tiktin quotes rostul de aur “the golden mouth” for John Chrysostom, and Genesis 11:1 in the 1688 Bible, where the whole earth was „un rost” “of one speech”.^[11][3] From the mouth came speech and the faculty of speaking, and the phrase pe de rost “by heart”, literally “by mouth”.^[11][5][4]

The later senses are “meaning, sense, purpose”, “order, arrangement” and “one's way of life, livelihood”.^[4][2] Pușcariu thought n-are nici un rost “it makes no sense” first meant “it has no expression”, with rost as “face” like Spanish rostro; the loom sense, the shed between the warp threads through which the shuttle passes, he linked to the beak.^[5] Scriban too derives the sense of order and meaning from that of the mouth.^[8] In building, rost is the joint or gap left between bricks or between parts of a structure.^[4][9]

The verb rosti “to pronounce, utter” is derived from it, as is rostui “to point (brickwork)”.^[2][5]

Timeline

• c. 1500 – rostulu “his mouth” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[3][9]
• 1570 – rost “mouth” in Coresi's psalter.^[12]
• 16th century – in the Psaltirea Scheiană and Coresi's Gospel (Matthew 13:35).^[11]
• 1660 – rost glosses Slavonic Chrysostom in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[13]
• 1688 – „un rost” “one speech” in the Bucharest Bible (Genesis 11:1).^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. meaning, sense; purpose, aim, justification; role, task.^[4][1]
2. One's way of life, social and material situation; household;^[4][1] a face rost de ceva “to get hold of something”.^[4][1]
3. order, arrangement; the way an activity is organized.^[4][1]
4. The shed of the loom, the angle between raised and lowered warp threads through which the shuttle passes.^[4][2]
5. A narrow joint or gap between two adjacent structures or parts of a structure; a groove in wood along which a lid or shutter slides.^[4]
6. (obsolete) The mouth;^[4][3][1] (literary) speech; the faculty of speaking.^[4][3][1]

Word family

• rosti
• rostui
• rostuială
• rostuitor
• rostitor

Related words

• gură
• Latin rōstrum

Usage notes

Pe de rost “by heart” is the main survival of the old sense: a învăța pe de rost “to learn by heart”.^[3][11] A separate regional rost of Bucovina and Banat, the grate of a stove through which the ashes fall, is a borrowing of German Rost (“grate”).^[3][9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. rost
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 725
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 962
5. ^ a b c d e Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 132
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7386
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 150
8. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1137
9. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. rost
10. ^ Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 113:13
11. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. rost
12. ^ Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 16:2
13. ^ 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. rost