salcie

Forms

salcie f (plural sălcii)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin salix (“willow”), from its accusative salicem.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The older Romanian form is ⟨salce⟩.^[3] It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian salțe and Megleno-Romanian sâlcă.^[2][6][7] Its Romance cognates include Italian salcio, Occitan sautze, Old French sauce, Catalan salze and Spanish sauce.^[2][8] Albanian shelg is also from the Latin word, as Wiktionary has it.^[1] Ciorănescu compares the Albanian word too.^[2] The Transylvanian ⟨salcă⟩ was formed back from the plural ⟨sălci⟩, Șăineanu notes.^[9]

Wiktionary derives the Latin word from Proto-Indo-European *sl̥H-ik- (“willow”).^[1] De Vaan points out that the suffix and the restricted spread of the word suggest a non-Indo-European source.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to a document of 1495.^[3] In Romanian texts it first appears as salce in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, in Psalm 136, where the exiles hang up their harps on the willows.^[11][3] MDA2's first record is the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Willow branches are taken to church on Palm Sunday, as palm branches are in Spain, so the old name of the feast was Duminica sălcii “willow Sunday”.^[2][3] The branches themselves are also called salcie.^[3][12]

Folk speech has many compounds for kinds of willow, such as salcie pletoasă and salcie plângătoare, the weeping willow.^[4][5] Scriban takes plângătoare “weeping” for a calque of French pleureur.^[13] A saying mocks an upstart: s-a suit scroafa în salcie “the sow has climbed the willow”.^[3]

Timeline

• 1495 – the first record, in a document.^[3]
• early 16th century – salce in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[11]
• c. 1551–1558 – salce in the Psaltirea Voroneț.^[11]
• c. 1573–1578 – the Psaltirea Scheiană, MDA2's first record.^[4]
• c. 1660–1670 – a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon glosses Slavonic верба “willow” with it.^[14]
• 1688 – the plural sălcii in the Bucharest Bible.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. willow: any of several trees and shrubs of the genus Salix, with long, thin, flexible branches, narrow leaves and catkins, growing by water.^[5][1]
2. salcie plângătoare, salcie pletoasă: the weeping willow, Salix babylonica.^[5][4]
3. A willow branch given out in church on Palm Sunday.^[3][12]

Word family

• sălcet
• sălciș
• sălciu
• sălcioară
• sălcuță

Related words

• Aromanian salțe
• Latin salix

Usage notes

The plural is sălcii, also salcii.^[5] Salce is a variant, and DEX and MDA2 also have a headword salcie² that only refers to salce.^[5][4] A rare 19th-century salcie “sauce”, used by Alecsandri, is a different word: a variant of salță, from Italian salsa through Greek σάλτσα.^[2][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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. salcie
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. salcie
4. ^ 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, 748
5. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 972
6. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 914
7. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 255
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7542
9. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 561
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ 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 136:2
12. ^ a b Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. 2
13. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1149
14. ^ 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. salcie
15. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ps 136:2
16. ^ DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 973