văduvă

Forms

văduvă f (plural văduve)^[1] Old texts write văduo: Coresi's Gospel book tells of a dead young man whose mother „era văduo” “was a widow”.^[2] A regional form văduă occurs in folk poetry collected by Jarník and Bârseanu.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin vidua (“widow”), the feminine of viduus (“bereft of a spouse”), which survives as văduv.^[4][2][5][6] Wiktionary starts from the Vulgar Latin form *viduva.^[1] Ciorănescu, following Tiktin, compares the second /v/ with the one in măduvă and in Italian vedovo.^[4] Miklosich and Cihac took the word from the Slavonic word for “widow”, a view Ciorănescu calls mistaken.^[4] The Latin word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₁widʰéwh₂ (“widow”).^[1][7]

The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian veduã is the feminine of veduu.^[8][1] Ciorănescu lists the Romance cognates of the masculine, among them French veuf and Spanish viudo besides the Italian word.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki (c. 1500–1520), in the curse of Psalm 108: „Să fie feciorii săraci și muiarea lui văduo” “let his sons be poor and his wife a widow”.^[2][9] The same verse has văduo in Coresi's psalter of 1570 and in the later 16th-century psalters.^[9] MDA2 also dates the word to the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The core sense has stayed the same: a woman whose husband has died and who has not married again.^[6][5] Old law texts and the Bible of 1688 use the word in this sense, often in the plural văduve.^[2][10] As the feminine of the adjective, it can also describe something deprived of what belongs to it, as in ramuri văduve “bare branches”.^[3][6]

MDA2 records older and regional uses of the adjective: a beehive without a queen, an office left without a holder.^[5] In Transylvania văduvă enters the folk names of a bird and of a plant.^[5] Văduvă de paie “straw widow” is a woman whose husband is away for a short time.^[5] The derivatives are recorded early: the adjective văduvesc “of a widow” in the Palia de la Orăștie and the verb văduvi “to widow” in 1581.^[11][12]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – văduo in Psalm 108 of the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[9][2]
• 1570 – the same verse in Coresi's psalter.^[9]
• 1581 – the verb văduvi “to widow”.^[12]
• 1581–1582 – the adjective văduvesc “of a widow” in the Palia de la Orăștie.^[11]
• 1649 – văduo in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[13]
• 1683 – văduvie “widowhood” in Dosoftei's lives of the saints.^[14]
• 1688 – văduvă and văduve throughout the Bucharest Bible.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A widow: a woman whose husband has died and who has not remarried.^[6][5][1]

Adjective

1. (feminine of văduv) widowed, having lost her husband.^[6][5]
2. (figurative) deprived of something, empty or bare: o casă văduvă de oaspeți “a house without guests”.^[6][5]

Word family

• văduvie
• văduvi

Related words

• văduv
• Aromanian veduã
• Latin vidua

Usage notes

DEX and DLR treat văduvă under văduv, as its feminine.^[6][2] Văduvă de paie “straw widow” is used of a woman left alone for a while by her husband.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. văduv
3. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 624
4. ^ 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. văduv
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1420
6. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1185
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1106
9. ^ a b c d 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 108:8
10. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Leviticus 21:14
11. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. văduvesc
12. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. văduvi
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. văduo
14. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. văduvie