săgeată

Forms

săgeată f (plural săgeți)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sagitta (“arrow”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} Ciorănescu cites Pușcariu, the REW, Skok and Jokl for this etymology.^[2][6] De Vaan finds no etymology for the Latin word.^[7]

It survives south of the Danube as Aromanian sădzeată.^[2][8][9] Its Romance cognates include Italian saetta, Occitan saeta, Spanish saeta, Catalan sageta and Old French saete.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Coresi's psalter of 1570, at Psalm 63:4, and the Psaltirea Scheiană has it a few years later.^[10][4][11] The sense is the weapon, “arrow”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Besides the arrow itself, the word was applied to things shaped or moving like one: the arm of a windmill (recorded in Moldavia in 1669), a toggle of a saw, the boom of a swing, the gable point of a roof and a fir top planted on the graves of young people.^[11][2] Modern uses add a direction sign, the sagitta of a curve in mathematics and the coastal spit of geography.^[3] Figuratively it is a barbed or ironic remark, and adverbially it means “very fast”.^[3] Plant names include săgeata apei “arrowhead” (Sagittaria).^[11][1]

The verb săgeta “to shoot or strike with an arrow” may be a Romanian derivative or may continue Latin sagittō directly, as the Aromanian sădzitedz and Italian saettare suggest.^[2][8]

Timeline

• 1570 – săgeată in Coresi's psalter.^[10]
• c. 1573-1578 – săgeată in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[4][10]
• 1664 – săgeată glosses Slavonic “arrow” in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[12]
• 1669 – săgeată “windmill sail” in Moldavia.^[11]
• 1688 – săgeată and săgeți in the Bucharest Bible.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. An arrow: a wooden shaft with a sharp point at one end and narrow flights at the other, shot from a bow.^[3][4][1]
2. (figurative) A barbed or ironic remark, a dig.^[3]
3. A direction sign in the shape of an arrow.^[3]
4. Each of the posts of a rural house or barn; the sail of a windmill; the long pole of a well sweep.^[3]
5. (mathematics) The greatest distance between an arc and its chord.^[3]
6. (geography) In săgeată litorală, a coastal spit that can close off a bay as a lagoon.^[3]
7. In săgeata-apei, the arrowhead plant (Sagittaria sagittifolia).^[3][1]

Word family

• săgeta
• săgetaș
• săgetător
• săgetătură
• săgețea
• săgețică

Related words

• sagitar
• săgetar
• Aromanian sădzeată
• Latin sagitta

Usage notes

Used adverbially, săgeată means “like an arrow, very fast”, as in a pornit săgeată “he shot off”.^[3] Săgeată de trăsnet “thunderbolt arrow” is the folk name for ancient weapons found in the ground.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. săgeată
3. ^ 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. 978
4. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 766
5. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. săgeată
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7508
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 917
9. ^ 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, 151
10. ^ a b c 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 63:4
11. ^ 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. săgeată
12. ^ 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. săgeată
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. 2 Kingdoms 11:26