vacă

Forms

vacă f (plural vaci)^[1] An older plural vace is recorded besides vaci.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin vacca (“cow”).^[3][2][4][1] The Latin word is usually compared with Sanskrit वशा (vaśā, “cow”), but de Vaan finds the vowel hard to explain and suggests an onomatopoeic origin, “the bellowing one”, connected with vāgiō (“to cry”).^[5][6]

It survives in all four branches: Aromanian vacă, Megleno-Romanian vacă and Istro-Romanian vǫke.^[3][7] Its Romance cognates are Italian vacca, French vache, Catalan vaca, Spanish vaca and Portuguese vaca.^[3][8] văcar “herdsman” may come straight from vaccārius, as the Aromanian word văcar does.^[3][9] It passed into Ukrainian.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1438, citing Drăganu.^[10] The DLR's first quotation tells that Abraham had sheep, cows and tents: „Avraam avea oi, vaci și corture”; its first dated record is a document of 1620 on the sale of two cows.^[11] The sense was the animal.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Beside the animal the word names its meat, and as a term of abuse a fat, lazy or stupid woman.^[4][12] Vacă de muls “a cow for milking” is a person or situation exploited for gain, recorded by Costinescu in 1870 after French vache à lait.^[13][4] Insects are named after it: vaca Domnului “the Lord's cow”, the firebug or the ladybird, and in Transylvania the female stag beetle.^[10][4] In Moldavia raftsmen on the Bistrița called a round-backed rock a vacă.^[10] Văcărit was a tax on cattle introduced in Wallachia in 1688 and in Moldavia in 1689.^[3]

Timeline

• 1438 – the first record, according to Tiktin.^[10]
• 1620 – 2 vaci in a document of sale.^[11]
• 1660 – vacă glossing Slavonic крава “cow” in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[14]
• 1688 – văcărit, a tax on cattle, in Wallachia.^[3]
• 1870 – vacă de muls in Costinescu's dictionary.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. cow: the domestic female of the bovines, kept for milk and meat; the meat of this animal, beef.^[4][2][1]
2. (derogatory) A fat, lazy or stupid woman.^[4][15]
3. In compounds: vacă-de-mare “walrus”;^[4] vaca-Domnului “firebug”.^[4]

Word family

• văcar
• văcăreasă
• văcăreață
• văcărie
• văcăriță
• văcărit

Related words

• vaccin
• Latin vacca

Usage notes

S-a dus bou și s-a întors vacă is said ironically of someone who went to learn and came back knowing less, and a rămâne ca vaca la poartă nouă means “to stand bewildered”.^[4][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1404
3. ^ a b c d e f g 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. vacă
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1180
5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Byhan, Arthur (1899), Istrorumänisches Glossar, Sechster Jahresbericht des Instituts für rumänische Sprache zu Leipzig: 174–366, p. 384
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9109
9. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1102
10. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. vacă
11. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. vacă
12. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1388
13. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 671
14. ^ 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. vacă
15. ^ Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. vacă