rumega

Forms

rumega (third-person singular present rumegă, past participle rumegat) 1st conjugation^[1] The 1688 Bible has the older form rumăga: „Tot dobitocul carele … rumegătură nu rumăgă, necurat va fi voao” “every beast that … does not chew the cud shall be unclean to you” (Leviticus 11:26).^[2][3] A Moldavian variant ruguma (present rugum) shows the same metathesis as Italian rugumare.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin rūmigō (“to chew the cud”), a late Latin verb.^{[5][4][3][2][6][1][7][8]} The Latin verb is formed on rūmen (“throat, gullet”) with the verb suffix -igō.^[1][9] Ungureanu notes that the grammarian Caper condemned it in favour of rūminō.^[10] It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian aroamig and Megleno-Romanian rumig.^[5][11][12] Its Romance cognates include Italian rugumare, Venetian rumegar, Sardinian arrumigare, Old French rungier, Catalan rumiar, Spanish rumiar and Portuguese romiar.^[5][8] The variant ruguma matches the Italian form.^[2][8]

The verb passed from Romanian into Ukrainian, as Ukrainian ремиґа́ти (remyɡáty), and Wiktionary also lists Polish rumiegać and Slovak rumigať among its descendants.^[5][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon of 1649 has rumeg “I chew the cud” as the gloss of a Slavonic verb.^[2][13] The 1688 Bible uses it in the dietary laws of Leviticus, of the animals that do or do not chew the cud.^[3][4][2]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is that of ruminant animals bringing up their food to chew it again.^[4][3] From it came the wider sense “to chew”, of horses champing their bits, and a pejorative use of people eating slowly and at length.^[3][14][6] Figuratively, as with Latin rūminō, it means “to turn something over in one's mind”, a sense Tiktin records for plans.^[2][6] MDA2 adds regional uses: of clothes, to wear through, and in superstition, of hair, to fall out.^[3]

Timeline

• 1649 – rumeg in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[2][13]
• c. 1660–1693 – rumeg in later Slavonic–Romanian lexicons.^[13]
• 1688 – rumăgă “chews the cud” in the Bucharest Bible.^[3][4][2]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive; of ruminants) To chew the cud, ruminate: Vacile rumegau la umbră.^[6][3][1]
2. (transitive) To chew something in the mouth;^[6][3][1] (pejorative; of people) to eat a lot, slowly.^[6][3][1]
3. (transitive, figurative) To ponder at length, to turn over in one's mind: a rumega un plan.^[6][2][1]
4. (regional; reflexive, of clothes) To wear through.^[3]

Word family

• rumegător
• rumegătură
• rumeguș

Related words

• mesteca
• rumina
• Aromanian aroamig

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 g h i j Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. rumega
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 736
4. ^ 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. rumega
5. ^ 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. rumega
6. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 967
7. ^ Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 1483
8. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7440
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Ungureanu, Dan (2024), Istoria limbii române, Chișinău: Cartier, p. 356
11. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
12. ^ 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, 41
13. ^ a b c 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. rumeg
14. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 787