tigru

Forms

tigru m (plural tigri, feminine equivalent tigroaică)^[1] Moxa's text of 1620 has the short form tigr; Șincai used tigrid.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin tigris (“tiger”), according to Ciorănescu and Tiktin, who also name Modern Greek τίγρις (tígris);^[3][2] Ciorănescu dates the Latin borrowing to the 18th century.^[3][2] MDA2 and the DLR name the Greek word together with French tigre and German Tiger, while DEX and the neologism dictionaries give French and Latin, and Wiktionary French alone.^{[4][5][6][7][1]} The modern word is thus one of the many with several possible sources.^[6][4] The word also exists south of the Danube: Aromanian tigru or tighru.^[3][8]

Latin took the word from Ancient Greek τίγρις (tígris), which Beekes calls an Oriental loan that came through Iranian; ancient writers called it Armenian or Median and linked it with an Iranian word for “arrow”, Avestan tigri.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is from Moxa's text of 1620, which lists the beasts that rear fierce young: „că să-i leu, pardos, tigr, toți fac puii mânioși” “for be it lion, leopard or tiger, all bring forth angry cubs”.^[2] MDA2's first record is Clemens's Romanian–German dictionary.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The word has always named the big striped cat of Asia.^[5][6] From the 19th century it is also used of a cruel or violent person, a sense Costinescu already gives in 1870 (“a man as bad as a wild beast”).^[10][5] Laurian and Massim described tigru as the masculine form of tigre, made on the model of leu.^[11] The feminine is tigroaică or tigresă, the latter after French tigresse.^[3]

Since the 1990s the press has called a fast-growing economy a tigru, after English Asian tiger: tigrii asiatici, Tigrul Celtic.^[12]

Timeline

• 1620 – tigr in Moxa, the first record.^[2]
• 1870 – Costinescu's dictionary, with the figurative sense “a cruel man”.^[10]
• 1997 – tigrul Europei, of a country with a booming economy, in the press.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. tiger: a large carnivorous mammal of the cat family, with a reddish-yellow coat crossed by black stripes, living in southern and eastern Asia (Felis tigris).^[6][4]
2. (figurative) An energetic, impulsive and cruel person.^[6][4]
3. (journalism) A country with fast economic growth: tigrii asiatici “the Asian tigers”.^[12]

Word family

• tigroaică
• tigresă

Related words

• Aromanian tigru
• Latin tigris

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. tigru
3. ^ a b c d 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. tigru
4. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1217
5. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. tigru
6. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1125
7. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. tigru
8. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 1011
9. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 615
11. ^ Laurian, A. T.; Massim, I. C. (1871–1876), Dictionariulu limbei romane, 2 vols., Bucuresci: Noua Typographia a Laboratoriloru Romani, p. s.v. tigru
12. ^ a b c Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. tigru