spată

Forms

spată f (plural spete)^[1] The plural is spete for the shoulder blade and spate for the loom part and the sword;^[2][3] Tiktin notes that in Moldavia and Transylvania spete also serves outside the weaving sense.^[2][3] Dosoftei writes speatele: „și le zdrobi ... oasele brațelor și umerilor, și speatele” “and he crushed the bones of their arms and shoulders, and their shoulder blades”.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin spatha (“broad blade; weaver's batten; broadsword”), which is from Ancient Greek σπάθη (spáthē, “any broad blade”).^{[5][2][6][3][1]} It survives in all four branches: Aromanian spatã, Megleno-Romanian spată and Istro-Romanian spǫte.^[5][7] The Romance cognates include Italian spada, French épée and Spanish espada, and Philippide compared Albanian špathë.^[5][8] The REW records the Romanian senses “shoulder” and “back” beside the Aromanian “sword”, and Ciorănescu also compares the derivatives of spatula, which gave French épaule (“shoulder”).^[8][9][5] Diculescu derived the word straight from Greek, which Ciorănescu does not find preferable; he notes that the weaving sense exists in Greek as well.^[5]

Romanian has the same Latin word in later loans: spadă from Italian, and spatie “clubs (at cards)” from Modern Greek σπαθί (spathí).^[5][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word appears in the earliest psalters: the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century has spată at Psalm 56, in the sense “sword”, and the articled form spatele “the shoulders” at Psalm 90.^[11][12][13] Tiktin's and MDA2's first records come from the Psaltirea Scheiană of about 1573–1578.^[3][6]

Semantic evolution

The Latin word named several broad, flat objects, and Romanian kept three of them.^[14][5] The sword is the sense of the 16th-century texts: the Palia de la Orăștie (1581–1582) has the cherubim before paradise „cu spată scoasă” “with drawn sword”; it is now archaic, used to give a text an old flavour.^[3][2][15] The shoulder blade and the shoulders gave “back”, in the old language and in phrases such as lat în spete “broad-shouldered”; for “back” the form spate took over.^[6][5][2] Regionally the word names the back of a chair.^[2][3] The weaver's reed of the loom, through which the warp threads pass, is the living sense; the Slavonic–Romanian lexicons of the 1660s already gloss it with the Slavonic word for a loom reed.^[2][16] The Lexicon de la Buda of 1825 lists all three: sword, loom reed and shoulder blade.^[17] Bulgarian borrowed the derivative spetează from Romanian.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – spată “sword” and spatele “the shoulders” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[11][12]
• c. 1573-1578 – spată in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[3][6]
• 1581-1582 – cu spată scoasă “with drawn sword” in the Palia de la Orăștie.^[3]
• 1649 – spată in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[16]
• c. 1660-1670 – the loom sense, glossing the Slavonic word for a weaver's reed.^[16]
• 1688 – spatele in the Bucharest Bible.^[18]
• 1825 – sword, loom reed and shoulder blade in the Lexicon de la Buda.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. The reed of a loom: a comb-like row of parallel blades fixed in the batten, through which the warp threads pass.^[2][1]
2. A small rod over which the loops are passed when knotting a net.^[2]
3. The shoulder blade; the part of the body around it;^[2][19][1] lat în spete “broad-shouldered”.^[2][19][1]
4. The broad bone at the top of an animal's forelimb; the corresponding part of the body.^[2][19]
5. (regional) The back of a chair.^[2][3]
6. (archaic) A broadsword with a long, straight, double-edged blade.^[2][15][1]

Word family

• spăcel
• spătar
• spătos
• spetează
• speti
• speteală

Related words

• omoplat
• scapulă
• umăr
• spate
• spadă
• spatie

Usage notes

A separate botanical spată, plural spate, the bract that wraps some flower clusters in bud, is a 19th-century loan from French spathe and Latin spatha, first recorded in Grecescu's flora of 1898.^[20][6][21] The plant name spata-dracului is a fern.^[19][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1036
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. spată
4. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. spată
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. spată
6. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 942
7. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 271
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8128
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8130
10. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 94
11. ^ a b 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 56:6
12. ^ a b 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 90:4
13. ^ Candrea, I.-A. (1916), Psaltirea Scheiană comparată cu celelalte psaltiri din sec. XVI și XVII traduse din slavonește, vol. II: Glosarele, București: Socec, p. 384
14. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 183
16. ^ a b c 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. spată
17. ^ 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. 660
18. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ps 90:4
19. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. spată
20. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. spată 2
21. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. spată