spurca

Forms

spurca (third-person singular present spurcă, past participle spurcat, third-person subjunctive spurce) 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin spurcō (“to make filthy, defile”), from spurcus (“dirty, filthy”).^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][1]} DER cites Pușcariu and the REW for it.^[2]

It survives south of the Danube as Megleno-Romanian spurc (“to eat meat in a fast”).^[8][2] Its Romance cognates include Italian sporcare.^[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century.^[9] The Codicele Voronețean renders James 3:6: „Așa și limba rădică-se întru mădularele noastre și spurcă totu trupul” “so the tongue rises among our members and defiles the whole body”.^[6][3]

Semantic evolution

The verb means making something dirty, above all with excrement or urine, and in a moral and religious sense defiling or profaning.^[6][4] The Gospel saying that what goes into the mouth does not defile a man, but what comes out of it, appears in Coresi's Tetraevanghel and again in the Bible of 1688.^[6][4]

Folk religious practice gave it specific uses: food or vessels are defiled when touched by a dead animal, or when fasting food touches meat;^[5] a spurca miercurea is to break the Wednesday fast, and a se spurca is to eat forbidden food in Lent.^[4][5] Figuratively it means getting a taste for forbidden things, and cursing someone; heard first in spring, the hoopoe was said to “defile” the hearer.^[4][5] In the game of knucklebones it means to miss the throw.^[4][2] An old law punished a priest who “defiled his father's bed”.^[4][3]

Derivatives include spurcat, spurcăciune and spurc.^[2] DER notes that Hungarian szpurkát comes from Romanian.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – spurca in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[9]
• 1560–1561 – spurcă in Coresi's Tetraevanghel.^[6]
• c. 1563–1583 – spurcă in the Codicele Voronețean (James 3:6).^[3][6]
• 1570 – spurcară “they defiled” in Coresi's Psalter.^[9]
• 1649 – Mardarie's lexicon gives spurc for Slavonic ѡскврънѧю “I defile”.^[10]
• 1688 – spurcă in the Bucharest Bible (Matthew 15:11).^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (popular) To make dirty, to soil; reflexive, to get dirty.^[5][1]
2. Reflexive: to soil oneself with excrement or urine.^[5]
3. (figurative) To defile, to profane, to dishonour.^[5][11]
4. (figurative) To curse someone, to swear at.^[5]
5. To touch food or a cooking vessel with something dirty or disgusting, or forbidden by the church.^[5]
6. Reflexive, in Christian practice: to eat meat or dairy food during a fast.^[5]
7. Reflexive, figurative: to get a taste for something bad or not allowed.^[5]

Word family

• spurc
• spurcăciune
• spurcat

Usage notes

A proverb runs „Și plopul e înalt, dar îl spurcă ciorile” “the poplar is tall too, but the crows befoul it”.^[4][6]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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. spurca
3. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 966
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. spurca
5. ^ 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. 1044
6. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. spurca
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8193
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 273
9. ^ a b c 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 54:23
10. ^ 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. spurc
11. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. spurca