scălda

Forms

scălda (third-person singular present scaldă, past participle scăldat, third-person subjunctive scalde) 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin excaldō (“to put in warm water”).^{[2][3][4][5][6][1]} Ciorănescu follows Diez, Pușcariu, the REW and Rosetti in this.^[2] The Latin verb is formed with ex- on caldus (“warm, hot”), the shorter form of calidus.^[1][7] For the Romanian sense “to bathe”, Candrea and Densusianu compare Latin excaldātiō (“warm bath”).^[8]

The verb survives in all four branches: Aromanian ascaldu, Megleno-Romanian scald and Istro-Romanian scǫd.^[2][9] The Romance cognates mostly mean “to heat” or “to scald”: Italian scaldare, Occitan escaudar, French échauder, and Spanish escaldar and Portuguese escaldar.^[2][10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is Coresi's Praxiu of 1563, with the sense “to bathe”.^[4] MDA2 dates it from Coresi's Carte de învățătură of 1581.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The oldest sense is to bathe someone, especially small children and the dead, in warm water to wash them, and generally to bathe or to take a bath; a horse is scăldat when it is taken into the water.^[3][5][4] From this came the figurative uses: eyes scăldați în lacrimi “bathed in tears”, things bathed in light or in blood, and rivers that wash a land.^[3][6]

Birds and other animals bathe in sand or dust.^[6] A colloquial phrase, a o scălda, means to dodge a clear answer, and Tiktin quotes it from Ion Ghica.^[4][6] The derivatives include scăldătoare “bathing place”, scăldătură and the Moldavian scăldușcă “bath”.^[2]

Timeline

• 1563 – Coresi's Praxiu, the first record.^[4]
• 1581 – Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[3]
• 1660 – scăldăm “we bathe” in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[12]
• second half of the 17th century – scăldare “bath” in the Caransebeș glossary.^[8]
• 1688 – scălda and its forms many times in the Bucharest Bible.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive and reflexive) To bathe, to give or take a bath; to swim in a river or lake.^[6][3][1]
2. (reflexive, figurative) To be reflected, to be mirrored.^[6]
3. (transitive, often figurative) To wet or soak;^[6][14] a-și scălda ochii în lacrimi, to weep; of waters, to flow along a land.^[6][14]
4. (reflexive) Of birds and other animals, to roll in sand or dust.^[6]
5. (colloquial) In a o scălda, to evade a question, to answer vaguely: Nu mai o scălda și spune ce s-a întâmplat!^[6][4]

Word family

• scaldă
• scăldătoare
• scăldătură
• scăldușcă
• scăldat
• scăldare

Related words

• cald
• Aromanian ascaldu

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. scălda
3. ^ 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, 793
4. ^ 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. scăldá
5. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. scăldă
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 986
7. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 23
8. ^ a b Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. 39
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 160
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 2946
11. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. scaldare
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. scăldăm
13. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ex 29:4
14. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. scălda