smicura

Forms

smicura (third-person singular present smicură, past participle smicurat), first conjugation^[1] Old texts also write zmicura: Dosoftei's lives of the saints say of a martyr „tot trupul zmicurind” “lashing his whole body”.^[2] Regional variants are smicuri (fourth conjugation) and micura.^[3][2][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *exmiculō (“to crumble”), a verb formed on micula (“crumb”), the diminutive of mīca (“grain, crumb”).^[3][2][1][4] Ciorănescu gives this Latin verb as one of two possibilities; the other puts the word under smâc, with ⟨r⟩ in place of an older ⟨l⟩ (*smicula), as in zgribuli beside ⟨zgriburi⟩.^[5] Pontbriant already analysed the word as Latin ex- and the root of mic.^[6]

The Latin noun meant “a grain (especially of salt), a crumb”; de Vaan, after Nyman, connects it with micō (“to quiver, flash”) as the “glittering” particle, rather than with Ancient Greek μικρός (mikrós, “small”).^[7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in a text printed in Hasdeu's Cuvente den bătrâni and dated before 1600: „Ardeți petri și le smicurați și le băgați în căldare” “burn stones, crumble them and put them in the cauldron”, in the sense “to crumble”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The old sense “to break into small pieces, crumble” is still regional; from it come “to shell (maize)”, said of stripping the grains off the cob, and, among threshing words, of beating dry pods to free the seeds.^[3][5][2] Dosoftei in the 1680s used it for “to flog”, a sense Coșbuc took up in his poems, and Ciorănescu adds a figurative “to trample”.^[2][9][5] The DLR records narrow regional senses from Bukovina (“to tremble”, “to move something quickly back and forth”) and northwestern Muntenia, where it is said of children whimpering.^[2][3] Nineteenth-century dictionaries gloss it with French émietter (“to crumble”).^[6][10]

Timeline

• before 1600 – smicurați “crumble” in a text of the Cuvente den bătrâni.^[2][3]
• 1680s – zmicurind “flogging” in Dosoftei's lives of the saints.^[2]
• 1862 – glossed “to crumble” in Pontbriant's dictionary.^[6]
• 1929 – Șăineanu glosses it “to shake” and derives it from Latin.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (regional, archaic) To crumble, to break into small pieces.^[3][9][1]
2. (regional) To shell maize, stripping the grains from the cob; to beat dry pods to free the seeds.^[5][3]
3. (archaic) To flog, to whip.^[3][9]
4. (regional) To tremble; to move something quickly back and forth.^[3][2]
5. (regional, of children) To whimper.^[3][2]

Related words

• mic
• Latin mīca

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. smicura
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 916
4. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 598
5. ^ 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. smicura
6. ^ a b c Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 685
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. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 157
10. ^ Antonescu, G. M. (1875), Dictionariu romanu-francesu, Bucuresci: Typografia Curții (Lucrători Associați), p. 290