stoarce

Forms

stoarce (first-person singular present storc, past participle stors, third-person subjunctive stoarcă) 3rd conjugation^[1][2] The old simple past was storșuiu: „luând în mână strugurii, storșuiu în păhar” “taking the grapes in my hand, I squeezed them into the cup” (1581–1582).^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin extorqueō (“to twist out, wrench away”), which passed into the third conjugation like toarce.^[5][2][4][6] Wiktionary posits a Vulgar Latin form of the third conjugation.^[1] The Latin verb is formed ex- + torqueō (“to twist”).^[7][1]

Aromanian has astorcu, also storcu.^[8][5] The Romance cognates include Italian storcere, Old French estordre, Occitan estorcer, Catalan estorcer and Spanish estorcer.^[5][9][10] The learned loan extorca “to extort” is a doublet from the same Latin verb.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is in the Palia de la Orăștie of 1581–1582, where the speaker pressed grapes into Pharaoh's cup (Genesis 40:11).^[6][3] The noun storsură “pressing of grapes” is older still, from about 1560.^[11][12] MDA2 gives a later first record, from a Menaion of 1776.^[4]

Semantic evolution

From pressing fruit and wringing cloth the verb came to mean draining a person of money or strength.^[6][2] Mardarie's lexicon of 1649 already uses storc for a Slavonic verb meaning “I exhaust”.^[13] Phrases built on this sense include a stoarce pe cineva de puteri “to wear someone out” and the colloquial a-și stoarce creierii “to rack one's brains”.^[2][4] A stoarce lacrimi is “to draw tears”.^[2] In the figurative senses the verb means to extort a gain by force or cunning, or to get something with great effort.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1560 – the noun storsură “pressing of grapes”.^[11]
• 1581-1582 – the simple past storșuiu in the Palia de la Orăștie, the first record of the verb.^[6][3]
• 1649 – storc “I exhaust” in Mardarie's lexicon.^[13]
• 1688 – the verb in the Bucharest Bible.^[3][14]
• 1776 – stors in a Menaion, MDA2's first record.^[4]
• 1853 – the verbal noun stoarcere in Șincai's chronicle.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. To squeeze or press something to force out the liquid in it; especially, to wring cloth by twisting its ends in opposite directions.^[2][4]
2. To press out a liquid or juice: a stoarce o lămâie “to squeeze a lemon”.^[2][6]
3. (figurative) To extort: to take a gain or a good by force or trickery.^[2][6]
4. (figurative) To obtain something with great effort.^[2]

Word family

• stoarcere
• storsură
• storcoși

Related words

• toarce
• întoarce
• extorca
• Aromanian astorcu

Usage notes

A stoarce pe cineva de puteri or de vlagă means “to drain someone of strength”;^[2] a-și stoarce creierii (colloquial) “to rack one's brains”.^[2] The verb is conjugated like întoarce.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1054
3. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. stoarce
4. ^ 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, 992
5. ^ a b c 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. stoarce
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. stoárce
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. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3094
10. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
11. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. storsúră
12. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 996
13. ^ a b 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. storc
14. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Mic 6:15
15. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 993