scamă

Forms

scamă f (plural scame)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin squāma (“scale of a fish”), as Ciorănescu, after Pușcariu and the REW, MDA2 and the DLR state.^{[2][3][4][1][5]} The Latin word may be related to squālus (“filthy”).^[1]

The sound shape is a difficulty: Latin /kʷa/ did not become /pa/ here, as it did in apă, so Tiktin supposes that the word was borrowed from a Romance language.^[6] The DEX leaves the word of unknown origin and only compares the Latin word.^[7] Scriban preferred a Modern Greek word for soap foam to the Latin one.^[8]

The word survives south of the Danube as Aromanian scamã (“lint”).^[2][9] The Romance cognates are Italian squama, and Occitan escama, Catalan escama, Spanish escama and Portuguese escama.^[2][5] Romanian also has the learned borrowing scvamă.^[1] Miklosich records a Ukrainian word borrowed from the Romanian one.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Latin–Romanian glossary of Caransebeș, which Tiktin dates to about 1670 and MDA2 to the second half of the 17th century.^[6][3]

Semantic evolution

The Latin sense “scale” lives on only in the regional scamă de fluturi, the scales of a butterfly's wings, in Moldavia, and in the husk of wheat or barley grains in Muntenia and Transylvania.^[3][4][6] The main sense became a short thread pulled from a fabric, lint or fluff.^[3][7]

In the 19th century scamă was above all charpie, threads plucked from old linen and used to dress wounds before cotton wool;^[6][10][8] Tiktin quotes a popular book of 1892 on old shirts ending as lint for hospitals, and Alecsandri a gift of lint for the wounded.^[6][10][8] The industrial sense, short fibres left over from spinning, and the fluff of plants such as the dandelion are modern.^[7][3] In thieves' slang it means “money”.^[11]

The adjective scămos and the verbs scămoșa and scăma, “to unravel”, belong to the family.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1670 – the Caransebeș glossary, the first record.^[6][3]
• 1825 – scamă in the Lexicon of Buda, glossed “fibre” and “down”.^[12]
• 1886 – Barcianu glosses it German Charpie.^[13]
• 1892 – lint for hospitals, in a popular book quoted by Tiktin.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A short thin thread pulled from a fabric; lint, fluff;^[7][1] (collective) very short textile fibres left over from spinning, used as insulation or filling.^[7][1]
2. (dated, collective) charpie: threads plucked from old linen and used to dress wounds.^[7][3]
3. (in the plural) The fluff of some plants.^[7][14]
4. (regional) The scales of a butterfly's wings; the husk of grain.^[3]

Word family

• scămos
• scămoșa
• scăma

Related words

• descăma
• scvamă
• scuamă
• Aromanian scamã

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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. scamă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 788
4. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. scamă
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8199
6. ^ 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. scámă
7. ^ 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. 984
8. ^ a b c Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1164
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 925
10. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 36
11. ^ Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. scamă
12. ^ 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. 665
13. ^ Barcianu, Sava Popovici (1886), Dicționar român-germân și germân-român, revised by D. P. Barcianu, part I: român-germân, Sibiu: Institut tipografic, p. 566
14. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. scamă