urla

Forms

urla (third-person singular present urlă, past participle urlat), first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin ululō (“to howl”),^{[2][3][4][5][1][6]} probably through a form with /r/, *urulō, which the REW and Ciorănescu reconstruct; the change of /l/ to /r/ is a dissimilation.^[2][6][7] The REW explains the vowel ⟨u-⟩ against Latin ⟨ŭ⟩ as imitative.^[6] The Latin verb is itself imitative.^[1][8] It survives in all four branches: Aromanian aurlu, Megleno-Romanian urlu and Istro-Romanian urlu.^[2][9][10] Its Romance cognates include Italian urlare, French hurler and Catalan udolar.^[2][6]

Candrea treated the regional sense “to come down (a slope)” on its own, and the REW traced it to a Latin *orulō;^[2] Ciorănescu holds that it is the same verb, with a double sense like that of tuna and țipa.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to a psalter of 1651.^[11] The Slavonic–Romanian lexicons of the 1660s gloss Slavonic words for howling and whining with urlu.^[12] MDA2 cites Dosoftei's Lives of the Saints (1682–1686).^[3]

Semantic evolution

The verb first named the long cry of dogs and wolves.^[5][4] From animals it passed to people who yell, wail, weep loudly or sing badly and very loud.^[4][11] Of wind, a storm or the sea it means to roar and howl, and of a field or the air resounding with noise.^[4][11] A crowd that urlă seethes with protest or acclaim.^[4][3] Folk phrases build on the howling of wolves: a-i urla lupii în casă “to have one's house deserted”.^[3] In the Banat it also means “to thunder”, and in Bihor “to go down”.^[2]

Timeline

• 1651 – first record, in a psalter.^[11]
• 1660 – urlu in the Slavonic–Romanian lexicon Lex.St.^[12]
• 1682–1686 – Dosoftei's Lives of the Saints.^[3]
• 1750 – wolves heard urlând cu glas subțire “howling in a thin voice”.^[5]
• 1815 – the beasts of the sea vor urla și vor țipa “will howl and shriek”.^[11][5]

Meanings

Verb

1. Of animals, especially wolves and dogs: to howl.^[4][3][1]
2. Of people: to yell, shout; to weep loudly; to sing very loud and out of tune.^[4][1]
3. (figurative) Of a crowd: to seethe, to be in an uproar.^[4]
4. Of wind, a blizzard or water: to roar, to make a loud noise.^[4]
5. (regional) To come down a steep slope.^[2][13]

Word family

• urlător
• urlătoare
• urlet
• urlătură

Related words

• Aromanian aurlu
• Latin ululo

Usage notes

The present is urlu, urli, urlă; the old language also has url.^[4][3] DLRLC lists the regional senses “to come down a slope; to rush at; to collapse” under a second headword, urla².^[13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. urla
3. ^ 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, 1390
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1176
5. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. urla
6. ^ a b c d Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9039
7. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 179
10. ^ Byhan, Arthur (1899), Istrorumänisches Glossar, Sechster Jahresbericht des Instituts für rumänische Sprache zu Leipzig: 174–366, p. 376
11. ^ 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. urla
12. ^ a b 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. urlu
13. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 594