usca

Forms

usca (present usuc, third-person singular usucă, past participle uscat, third-person subjunctive usuce) 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is most likely inherited from Latin exsūcō (“to squeeze the juice out”), formed from ex- and sūcus (“juice, moisture”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} Tiktin notes that the verb already meant “to dry” in Vulgar Latin, and that the likeness of siccō (“to dry”) may have helped.^[4] The REW lists the Romance cognates Italian asciugare, French essuyer and Spanish enjugar.^[5]

The verb survives in all four branches: Aromanian usuc, Megleno-Romanian usc and Istro-Romanian uscu.^[6][7][8]

Ciorănescu rejects this etymology and proposes *usticō, from ustus (“burnt”), the past participle of ūrō (“to burn”), since the Latin verb meant both “to burn” and “to dry”.^[6] On his view the expected ⟨ustca⟩ lost its /t/, and the present ⟨usuc⟩ is a later form.^[6] Wiktionary judges this explanation less likely.^[1] Ciorănescu also lists Roesler's Turkish etymology as less probable.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century: the form uscă “dried up” in Psalm 21:16.^[9][4] MDA2 dates the verb to Coresi's Carte de învățătură of 1581, which speaks of clay, soft by nature, „ce soarele-l usucă” “which the sun dries”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is drying by the sun, wind or fire, as with clothes or fruit.^[3][4] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 uses it of God drying the Red Sea and of the wind that withered a vine.^[4] Plants wither, and people waste away: mă usuc de dorul țării “I am pining away with homesickness”.^[4][10]

Colloquial senses grew from “to drain dry”: to ruin someone by making him spend, and bea de usucă “he drinks heavily”.^[11][12] Tiktin traces a gambler's m-ai uscat “you have cleaned me out” to French mettre à sec.^[4] Banat and Transylvania keep the present usc for standard usuc.^[4][2]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – uscă in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (Psalm 21:16), the first record.^[9]
• 1570 – uscat in Coresi's Psalter (Psalm 65:5).^[13]
• 1581 – usucă “dries” in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[2][3]
• 1688 – the Bucharest Bible: God dried up the Red Sea (Joshua 2:10).^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive and reflexive) To dry: to take the moisture out of something, or lose it, by wringing or by exposure to sun, wind or fire;^[11][2][1] a i se usca gura “to be very thirsty”.^[11][2][1]
2. (transitive) To dehydrate vegetables, fruit or fish in order to keep them.^[11]
3. (reflexive and transitive) To grow, or make, thin, weak and pale; to pine away; of an organ, to atrophy.^[11]
4. (reflexive, of plants) To lose their sap; to wither.^[11]
5. (transitive, figurative, colloquial) To make someone spend a great deal; to ruin.^[11]
6. (reflexive, figurative, colloquial) To suffer want and lead a hard life.^[11]
7. (slang) To fleece someone of his money.^[12]

Word family

• uscăcios
• uscățiv
• uscăciune
• uscat
• uscător
• uscătură

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1396
3. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. usca
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. usca
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3073
6. ^ 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. usca
7. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1095
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 319
9. ^ 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 21:16
10. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 682
11. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1177
12. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. usca
13. ^ 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 65:5