rouă

Forms

rouă f (uncountable)^[1] Old texts write roao, roaă and roa: the Bible of 1688 has „Va fi întru anii aceștea roaoa și ploaie” “there shall be dew and rain in these years” (1 Kings 17:1).^[2][3] MDA2 lists the regional variants roauă and rauă and the old roor and ruore.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rōs (“dew”), a word that Romanian shares with Occitan ros and Catalan ros.^{[3][5][4][6][1]} It survives in Aromanian aroauă and Megleno-Romanian rauă.^[3][7][8] The Latin word comes from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rṓs (“dew, juice”), the source also of Lithuanian rasà.^[9]

How the Latin form gave the Romanian one is disputed.^[3][1] Candrea's *rōlla is rejected by Ciorănescu and called impossible by the REW.^[3][5] Philippide, Pușcariu and Iordan started from a neuter *rōs, with an early Romanian ⟨*ro⟩ lengthened as in zi beside ziuă;^[3] Ciorănescu doubts it, since nōs gave noi.^[3] Meyer supposed a change of declension, *rovem modelled on bovem, the accusative of the word for “ox”.^[3][1] Tiktin, Skok and Graur derived it from *rore with the loss of the second /r/ by dissimilation, which is also the REW's view.^[3][5] Ciorănescu finds none of these clear; he suggests that this form became ⟨*roore⟩ and then ⟨*rouri⟩, which was felt as a plural, so that a new singular was made from it.^[3][1] The derivatives roura and rouros seem to start from such a plural ⟨*rouri⟩.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (c. 1500–1520), in a verse on the dew of Hermon that falls on the hills of Zion.^[4][10] Coresi's psalter and the Palia of 1581 have it too, the latter in the phrase roa ceriului “the dew of heaven”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The meaning “dew” has stayed the same from the first texts.^[10][4] It gave images of freshness and purity: ca roua “fresh, tender; pure”, and pe rouă or pe rouă nescuturată “at first light, before the dew is shaken off”.^[6] In a charm quoted by Tiktin, something is bidden to vanish like dew from a flower.^[2]

Roua-cerului “dew of heaven” names the sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), whose leaves are covered with sticky drops, and Tiktin also records it for a grass, Glyceria.^[6][2] Physics uses temperatură de rouă for the dew point.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – roa in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[4][10]
• c. 1573–1578 – in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[2]
• 1581 – roa ceriului “the dew of heaven” in the Palia.^[10]
• 1688 – roaoa in the Bucharest Bible.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. dew: drops of water that form on the ground and on plants, mostly at night, when water vapour in the air condenses;^[6][4][1] temperatură de rouă “dew point”.^[6][4][1]
2. ca roua “fresh, delicate; pure”;^[6] pe rouă (nescuturată) “at dawn”.^[6]
3. roua-cerului: the sundew, a small insect-eating plant (Drosera rotundifolia).^[6][2]

Word family

• roura
• rourică
• rouros

Related words

• Aromanian aroauă
• Latin rōs

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. róuă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. rouă
4. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 730
5. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7374
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 964
7. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 40
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 248
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
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. rouă