urmă

Forms

urmă f (plural urme)^[1]

Etymology

Its origin is disputed.^[2][3] According to MDA2 and the DLR, it is inherited from Vulgar Latin *orma, and Wiktionary calls it possibly from that form or from Late Latin osma, itself from Ancient Greek ὀσμή (osmḗ, “smell”).^[4][3][1] Ciorănescu calls it of uncertain origin; its agreement with Italian orma (“footprint”) and Albanian gyurmë shows that it is an old word.^[2]

Two Greek sources have been proposed.^[2] Cihac and Schuchardt took it from Ancient Greek ὁρμή (hormḗ, “impulse”), which could have meant “impression”.^[2] The view cited more often, held by Diez, Densusianu, Tiktin and Meyer-Lübke, starts from the Greek word for “smell” through a verb *osmō (“to scent, track”).^[2][5] Ciorănescu finds it hard to accept: the forms with ⟨s⟩, such as Venetian usmar, Old French osmer and Spanish husmear, keep the sense of smelling, while those with ⟨r⟩ all mean a visible footprint, so the two groups may have different origins.^[2]

The word is found in Aromanian urmã (also ulmă) and Megleno-Romanian urmă.^[2][6][7] Ciorănescu derives the verb urma from the noun;^[8] Scriban took the noun from the verb.^[2][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2's first record is the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, copied about 1500–1520.^[4] There it renders Psalm 76:20: „În mare-su caile tale şi cărarile tale întru ape multe şi urmele tale nu se cunoscu” “thy ways are in the sea and thy paths in many waters, and thy footsteps are not known”.^[3] The first sense is the footprint left by a person or animal.^[4][9]

Semantic evolution

From the footprint the word passed to any mark or trace left behind, to a vestige and a memory, and to what follows: the end or outcome of something.^[10][2][8] Adverbial phrases grew out of the sense “track behind someone”: în urmă “behind; afterwards”, pe urmă “then, later”, la urmă “at the end” and la urma urmei “after all”.^[2][8] An old phrase urmă de om “generation” was modelled on Hungarian nyom.^[4]

In folk belief a person's footprint could be used in magic, and an urmă rea was a bewitched spot that brought illness.^[4][1] Historically urmă was also a unit of length, a sixth of a stânjen.^[1] DER records the word's borrowing into Ukrainian as urma, after Candrea.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – urmele “the footsteps” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[4][3][11]
• 1570 – urmele in Coresi's psalter.^[11]
• 1645 – o urmă de om “a human footprint” in the Herodotus translation.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. a footprint, track: a mark left by someone or something where they stood or passed: Pe zăpadă se vedeau urme de iepure.^[10][4][1]
2. a trace or vestige;^[10][1] (in the negative) not the least amount: nici urmă de îndoială “not a trace of doubt”.^[10][1]
3. the final point or stage of something; the end.^[10]
4. (folk magic) earth taken from someone's footprint.^[1][4]
5. (historical) a unit of length, a sixth of a stânjen.^[1]

Word family

• urma
• urmări
• urmaș
• urmatic
• următor

Related words

• Aromanian urmã
• Italian orma

Usage notes

The word lives on in many phrases: a da de urma cuiva “to track someone down”, a călca pe urmele cuiva “to follow in someone's footsteps”, din urmă “last”, pe urmă “afterwards”.^[10]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. urmă
3. ^ 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. urmă
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, 1391
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6112
6. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 181
7. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 318
8. ^ a b c d Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1383
9. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. úrmă
10. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1176
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 17:40