tăun

Forms

tăun m (plural tăuni)^[1] A variant tăune is used beside tăun: Ispirescu writes „dete peste un tăune” “he came upon a horsefly”.^[2][3] Regional speech also has dăun, dăune, taon and taun.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin tabānus (“gadfly, horsefly”), the Latin name of the insect.^[5][6][3][1] Most scholars trace it through a Vulgar Latin form with another suffix, *tabōnem (nominative *tabo), which also gave French taon.^{[5][4][3][7][8]} Pușcariu, the REW, Tiktin, Meyer-Lübke and Graur hold this view, and MDA2 and DEX give that nominative as the etymon.^{[5][4][3][7][8]} Ciorănescu thinks it more likely that the word comes straight from the classical form, through a Romanian intermediate *tăîn reshaped in the way înăuntru was.^[5][1] The REW also sets up *tafānus for the Italian form and its kin.^[8] The Latin word itself, recorded from Varro on, is of unknown origin; it has been compared with Etruscan names.^[9][1][10]

The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian tãun and Megleno-Romanian tăun.^[5][11][12] Its Romance cognates include Italian tafano, Spanish tábano, Portuguese tavão and Occitan tavan.^[13][14][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to about 1660, in the Slavonic–Romanian lexicon he cites as Staicu's, and the form tăun glosses a Slavonic word for “wasp” in the Lex.St. lexicon of about 1660.^[6][15] In the 1680s Dosoftei's lives of the saints tell of a place “full of wasps and horseflies and gnats”: „plin de viespi și tăuni și țânțari”.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The core sense is the bloodsucking fly that stings cattle (Tabanus bovinus); regionally the name passes to other insects: the horse botfly, the hornet, the great peacock moth (in the form tăune) and the cockroach.^[4][3] The phrase a fugi ca tăunul cu paiul “to run like a horsefly with a straw” means to run very fast;^[3][2] Creangă uses it of the devil Scaraoschi.^[3][2] Alecsandri used the word figuratively for the tormentor of a prisoner, „al temniței tăun”.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1660 – tăun in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon, the first record.^[6][15]
• 1664 – the variant tăune in the Lex.Pet. lexicon.^[15]
• 1682–1686 – tăuni in Dosoftei's lives of the saints.^[6]
• 1705 – tăunii in Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică.^[15]
• 1870 – Cihac's etymological dictionary, MDA2's first record.^[4][13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A horsefly or gadfly: a large brown fly whose females sting cattle and people to feed on their blood and spread disease.^[3][4][1]
2. (regional) Other insects: the horse botfly, the hornet, the great peacock moth, the cockroach.^[4]

Related words

• Aromanian tãun
• Latin tabānus

Usage notes

A fugi ca tăunul cu paiul “to run very fast”: A fugit ca tăunul cu paiul cum a văzut câinele.^[3] A regional phrase a-i da (cuiva) tăunii says that a young man's beard is beginning to grow.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 402
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1109
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1176
5. ^ a b c d e 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. tăun
6. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. tăun
7. ^ a b Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 160
8. ^ a b c d Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8507
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
11. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1027
12. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 1005
13. ^ a b Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 279
14. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1305
15. ^ a b c d 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. tăun