sufla

Forms

sufla (third-person singular present suflă, past participle suflat, third-person subjunctive sufle) 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin sufflō (“to blow, puff up”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} The Latin verb is formed from sub- and flō (“to blow”).^[6] It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian suflu and Megleno-Romanian suflu.^[2][7][8] Its Romance cognates include Italian soffiare, Occitan soflar, French souffler and Spanish sollar.^[2][5]

Its best-known derivative, suflet “soul”, is explained in three ways: Ciorănescu forms it in Romanian with the suffix -et;^[2] Pascu takes it from sufflātus with a change of suffix;^[2] Meyer and Candrea reconstruct *sufflitus, formed like hālitus (“breath”).^[2] The neologisms sufleu, sufler and suflu “breath; blast” came later from French.^[2][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 gives the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583) as the first record.^[3] Tiktin cites the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578), Psalm 147, where the wind blows at God's word.^[10] The psalters of Coresi (1570) and the Scheiană have the subjunctive sufle.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The Latin verb meant to blow out or puff up;^[6][2][4] Romanian kept the senses of breathing out with force, panting and the blowing of the wind.^[6][2][4] From blowing on a fire or a candle came the senses “to kindle” and “to blow out”.^[2] Speaking under one's breath gave “to whisper, to tip off”, then the theatre sense of prompting an actor.^[4][2] Craft senses followed: blowing glass, and coating metal thinly with gold or silver.^[4] In colloquial use a sufla ceva de sub nas is to snatch something from under someone's nose.^[4]

The noun suflare means breath and, by extension, life and a living being.^[2] Suflet widened from “breath” to “life, soul, mind” and to “person”, as in counting the souls of a village.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1563–1583 – first record, in the Codicele Voronețean.^[3]
• 1570 – sufle in Coresi's psalter.^[12]
• c. 1573–1578 – in the Psaltirea Scheiană, of the wind.^[10][11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To blow air out of the mouth with force; to blow on a fire or a flame;^[4][1] (transitive) to blow something away, to blow one's nose, to sound a wind instrument.^[4][1]
2. (intransitive) To breathe hard, to pant;^[4][1] a nu mai sufla “to be dead; to keep quiet”.^[4][1]
3. (transitive) To make glass objects by blowing.^[4]
4. (transitive) To coat a metal object thinly with gold or silver, to gild.^[4][2]
5. (intransitive, of the wind) To blow.^[4][3]
6. (transitive) To whisper, to tell in secret; to prompt an actor or a pupil.^[4][1]

Word family

• suflare
• suflător
• suflet
• sufletesc
• însufleți

Related words

• afla
• umfla
• Latin sufflō

Usage notes

The proverb cine s-a fript cu ciorbă suflă și în iaurt “he who was burnt by soup blows on yoghurt too” warns that a bad experience makes one overcautious.^[4] A nu sufla un cuvânt is to say nothing.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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. sufla
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, 1045
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1, 1070
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8430
6. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. sufflō
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 988
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 280
9. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 88
10. ^ 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. suflá
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 41:6
12. ^ 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 142:3