strat

Forms

strat n (plural straturi)^[1] Besides the usual plural straturi, old texts have straturele and strature, and a plural strate survives in regional speech and in the geological sense.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin strātum (“bedding, coverlet; bed”), the neuter of strātus, the perfect passive participle of sternō (“to spread”).^{[4][5][6][1][7]} Its Romance cognates include Old Italian strato, Occitan estrat, and Spanish estrado and Portuguese estrado “raised platform”.^[4][6] Albanian shtrat (“bed”) was borrowed from the same Latin word, and Pușcariu noted that only Romanian and Albanian kept the sense “bed”.^[5][1]

The modern technical senses “layer” and “stratum” were taken over from the modern European languages: MDA2 names French strate beside the Latin word, and Gabinschi calls these senses recent borrowings.^[2][8] Graur groups the word with stradă and estradă, which came into Romanian by other routes from the same Latin verb.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is first recorded in the 16th-century psalters with the sense “bed”: the Psaltirea Voroneț (c. 1551–1558) has stratul in Psalm 131:3.^[10] The Psaltirea Scheiană and Coresi's psalter of 1577 render Psalm 6:6 with it: „Lua în toate nopți stratul mieu” “every night I took my bed”, with tears soaking the bedding.^[11][12][13] MDA2 gives the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583) as its first record, in a passage on conjugal relations.^[2][12]

Semantic evolution

The old sense was a bed or bedding for people, and the word was also used of the marriage bed; phrases such as în strat de moarte “on one's deathbed” come from it.^[2][12] From the human bed it passed to the lair or litter of animals, as in Cantemir, who wrote that neither birds in their nests nor dogs in their beds have food come to their mouths.^[13][14] Further transferred senses are the garden bed of flowers or vegetables, the carriage or stand of a gun or machine and the stock of a rifle.^[13][3] Miron Costin's chronicle (c. 1675) uses straturile for gun carriages that the Cossacks smashed.^[13][12]

The Lexicon de la Buda (1825) defines it as a sediment and as a garden bed.^[15] The sense “layer”, and with it the geological stratum, is recorded by Costinescu in 1870 beside the bed and the gunstock.^[16] Today it is the main sense, extended to social strata and, in linguistics, to the influence of another language.^[3] Regional senses include the womb and afterbirth, and the litter on which a woman lies after giving birth.^[2][17]

Timeline

• c. 1551–1558 – stratul “bed” in the Psaltirea Voroneț, the first record.^[10]
• c. 1563–1583 – in the Codicele Voronețean, of the marriage bed.^[2][12]
• c. 1573–1578 – „stratul mieu” “my bed” in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[11][13]
• c. 1675 – straturile “gun carriages” in Miron Costin's chronicle.^[13]
• 1688 – straturi “bedding” in the Bucharest Bible.^[18]
• 1825 – “sediment” and “garden bed” in the Lexicon de la Buda.^[15]
• 1870 – “layer” and the geological stratum in Costinescu's dictionary.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. A layer or coating of material spread fairly evenly over a surface or between two others: un strat gros de zăpadă “a thick layer of snow”.^[3][1]
2. A compact band of one material inside a mass of another.^[3]
3. (geology) A stratum of sedimentary or metamorphic rock lying between other deposits; in this sense the plural is strate.^[3]
4. (linguistics) An outside influence on a language, as in substrat.^[3]
5. (figurative) A part of a social class; a social layer.^[3][19]
6. A garden bed: a strip of soil with paths along its edges, sown with vegetables or flowers.^[3][1]
7. (popular) litter or bedding for animals.^[3]
8. (popular) A bed or bedding for people.^[3][1]
9. The base on which some objects or tools rest; a pedestal.^[3]
10. The stock of a rifle.^[3][13]

Word family

• stratifica

Related words

• stradă
• Latin strātum
• Albanian shtrat

Usage notes

Strat de Rusalii or stratul Rusaliilor, a folk feast between Easter and Whitsun, is a separate word: MDA2 and the DLR derive it from Bulgarian, reshaped after strat “bed”.^[20][12] Scriban traced it to a Bulgarian word for “middle”.^[14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 998
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1056
4. ^ a b 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. strat
5. ^ a b Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 152
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8292
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 165
9. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică
10. ^ 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 131:3
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 6:6
12. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. strat
13. ^ 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. strat
14. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1248
15. ^ 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. 676
16. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 564
17. ^ Marin, Maria; Mărgărit, Iulia, Glosar dialectal. Muntenia, București: Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti”
18. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. 2 Kingdoms 17:28
19. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. strat
20. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 999