tuse

Forms

tuse f (uncountable)^[1] The Moldavian form is tusă: „O voce înecată de tusă” “a voice choked by coughing”, in Teodoreanu.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin tussis (“cough”).^{[3][4][5][6][1]} Pușcariu and the REW give the same source.^[3][7] The Latin word may come from tundō (“to beat”), with the doubled ⟨ss⟩ of an imitative word, or be imitative itself.^[8][9][1]

It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian tusi and Megleno-Romanian tuse.^[3][10] Its Romance cognates include Italian tosse, French toux, Occitan tos, Catalan tos, Spanish tos and Portuguese tosse.^[3][7] Scriban derived the eastern tusă from Vulgar Latin *tussa, comparing Italian dialect forms.^[11]

The verb tuși “to cough” is not formed on the noun: it continues Latin tussīre.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 and the DLR give the Lexicon Marsilianum, a 17th-century Latin–Romanian–Hungarian dictionary, as the first record.^[4][2] Tiktin dates it to Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică of 1705, where a fox falls ill with a cough with blood.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The word names both the reflex and, by extension, an illness of the airways marked by it.^[4][5] Old texts list it among diseases: „vărsat, tuse, friguri” “smallpox, cough, fevers” (1733).^[2] Folk speech has names for kinds of cough: tuse măgărească “donkey cough” for whooping cough, and in the regions tuse coaptă “ripe cough” for tuberculosis.^[6][4][12]

Timeline

• 17th century – the Lexicon Marsilianum, the first record.^[4][2]
• c. 1660 – tuse glosses Slavonic “phlegm” in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[13]
• 1705 – tusa cu sânge “the cough with blood” in Cantemir.^[6]
• 1733 – tuse in a list of diseases.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cough: the reflex of a short breath in followed by a sudden, noisy breath out.^[5][1]
2. An illness of the airways marked by coughing.^[4]
3. tuse convulsivă or tuse măgărească: whooping cough.^[12][6]

Related words

• tuși
• Aromanian tusi
• Latin tussis

Usage notes

The noun has no plural; its articled form is tusea and its genitive tusei.^[6][12] A regional saying, s-a întâlnit tusea cu junghiul “the cough has met the stitch”, is said of two people alike in their faults.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. tuse
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. tuse
4. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1308
5. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1156
6. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. túse
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9016
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 1051
11. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 1359
12. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. tuse
13. ^ 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. tuse