sapă

Forms

sapă f (plural sape)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin sappa (“hoe, mattock”).^[2][3][4][1] It survives in all four branches: Aromanian sapã, Megleno-Romanian sapă and Istro-Romanian sope.^[2][5][6] Its Romance cognates include Italian zappa, French sape, Spanish zapa and Friulian sape.^[2][4][1]

Wiktionary calls the Latin word of uncertain origin and reports Meyer-Lübke's view that it was borrowed from Illyrian.^[1] Nocentini instead explains the Italian word from zappo (“billy goat”), after the likeness of a two-pronged hoe to the horned animal.^[7] Ciorănescu thinks that Hungarian szápoly comes from the Romanian word, and probably Albanian sëpatë (“axe”) too.^[2] Wiktionary lists other proposals for the Albanian word.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to a document of 1588, with the sense “hoe”.^[4] MDA2 takes its first record from a text in Hasdeu's Cuvente den bătrâni, a collection of texts from 1550–1600.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Besides the tool, the word names the work done with it, the hoeing of a field or vineyard: a document of 1802 speaks of the vineyards being worked „pînă la sapa după lăstar”, “up to the hoeing after the shoots”.^[8][4] DEX and MDA2 treat this sense as a separate noun formed on the verb săpa, while Tiktin and NODEX keep it with the tool.^{[9][3][4][10]}

The phrase a ajunge la sapă de lemn “to come to a wooden hoe”, that is, to be ruined, is in the Lexicon of Buda (1825), which compares Terence's ad rastros redeo.^[11] Sapa și lopata “the hoe and the shovel” means death or the loss of all hope: Scriban explains it by the tools that dig a grave and fill it in.^[3][12] Later technical senses are the drill bit of an oil well and the spade at the rear of a gun carriage; the four corner rafters of a peasant roof are called sape as well.^[9][13] In Oltenia and Transylvania the word can also mean a ploughshare.^[3]

Timeline

• 1550-1600 – the first record MDA2 gives, in a text of Hasdeu's Cuvente den bătrâni.^[3]
• 1588 – sapă “hoe” in a document.^[4]
• 1802 – sapa “the hoeing” of vineyards.^[8]
• 1825 – a ajunge la sapă de lemn “to be ruined” in the Lexicon of Buda.^[11]
• 1929 – the corner rafters of a peasant roof, in Șăineanu's dictionary.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. hoe: a farm tool for digging and weeding, a flat or slightly hollow steel blade fixed almost at a right angle to a wooden handle.^[9] Sapă rotativă: a horse-drawn machine with star-shaped discs that breaks the crust of the soil.^[9]
2. (popular) The work of hoeing; a round of weeding.^[3][10]
3. The drill bit at the lower end of a drill string, which cuts the borehole.^[9]
4. The metal spade at the rear of a gun carriage, driven into the ground to hold the gun when it fires.^[9]
5. Each of the four corner rafters of the roof of a peasant house.^[9]

Word family

• săpa
• săpător
• săpătură
• săpoi
• săpăligă

Related words

• Aromanian sapã
• Italian zappa

Usage notes

DEX has two more nouns spelled sapă.^[9] Sapă² “the action of digging” is formed on săpa;^[9][3] MDA2 dates it to 1800.^[9][3] Sapă³ is the croup (crupă) of a horse or another animal, an old and popular word that DEX compares with Serbian sapi.^[9] Tiktin dates it to 1705, in Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică.^[4] Șăineanu connected it with Turkish sap “handle”.^[14] The plural of the hoe is sape, regionally săpi.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. sapă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 756
4. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. sapă
5. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 915
6. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 257
7. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. sapă
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 975
10. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. sapă
11. ^ a b Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 608
12. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1154
13. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 565
14. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1900), Influența orientală asupra limbei și culturei române, vol. I: Introducerea; vol. II.1: Vorbele populare; vol. II.2: Vorbele istorice, literare, Indice, București: Socec, p. 2, 314