zăpadă

Forms

zăpadă f (plural zăpezi)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic западъ (zapadŭ), which Ciorănescu glosses “a fall”, following Miklosich and Cihac; the sense “snow” developed in Romanian, as Philippide noted.^[2] In Old Church Slavonic the noun meant the setting of the sun and the west,^[3] and Bulgarian запад (zapad, “west”) keeps that sense.^[2][4] DEX compares the verb западати (zapadati, “to fall”).^[5][1] Tiktin derives the Slavonic noun from пасти (pasti, “to fall”).^[6]

The Academy's dictionaries take another route: the DLR and MDA2 call the noun a back-formation from Romanian zăpădi (“to cover with snow”), and Wiktionary agrees.^[7][8][1] The DLR traces that verb to a Slavonic compound of the same verb, comparing Serbo-Croatian zapasti (“to fall (of rain or snow)”).^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is from 1561, in Coresi's Tetraevanghel at Matthew 28:3, already with the sense “snow”.^[6] MDA2 dates it to the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578).^[8] Coresi's psalter of 1570 has zăpada at Psalms 50:8, 147:5 and 148:8.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The word competed with two other names for snow.^[7][6] In the DLR's quotation from the Psaltirea Scheiană the text reads neile “the snows”, where another version has zăpezile.^[7] Tiktin marks omăt as the Moldavian word and nea as the Transylvanian one,^[6] and Scriban gives omăt for the east and neauă as the old word.^[11] Wiktionary notes that zăpadă displaced the native nea in the southern half of Romania.^[1]

Beside the precipitation, the word names the layer of snow on the ground, and de zăpadă means “snow-white”.^[8][12] Chemistry uses zăpadă carbonică for solid carbon dioxide.^[5] In recent slang it means cocaine, after English snow, in the press from 1997 on.^[13][14]

Timeline

• 1561 – zăpadă “snow” in Coresi's Tetraevanghel, the first record.^[6]
• 1570 – zăpada in Coresi's psalter.^[10]
• c. 1573–1578 – the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[8]
• 1660 – in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[15]
• 1688 – „mai vârtos decât zăpada mă voiu albi” “I shall be whiter than snow” in the Bucharest Bible (Psalm 50:8).^[6]
• 1801 – Zapáda, Latin nix, in Klein's dictionary.^[16]
• 1997 – zăpadă “cocaine” in the press.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. snow: solid precipitation falling in white flakes made of ice crystals; the layer they form on the ground when it is below freezing: Zăpada a acoperit drumul. “Snow covered the road.”^[5][8][1]
2. (chemistry) zăpadă carbonică: solid carbon dioxide, dry ice.^[5][8]
3. (slang) cocaine.^[14][13]

Word family

• înzăpezi
• zăpădos

Related words

• zăpădi
• nea
• omăt
• Old Church Slavonic западъ (zapadŭ)

Usage notes

The plural is zăpezi and the genitive-dative singular zăpezii, with the vowel change a > e.^[5][17] Alb ca zăpada means “very white”.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b 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. zăpadă
3. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
4. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 1, 601
5. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1218
6. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. zăpadă
7. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. zăpadă
8. ^ 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, 1542
9. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. zăpădi
10. ^ 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 50:8
11. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1431
12. ^ Dima, Eugenia (coord.) (2007), Dicționar explicativ ilustrat al limbii române, Chișinău: Arc / Gunivas, p. s.v. zăpadă
13. ^ a b c Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. zăpadă
14. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. zăpadă
15. ^ 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. zăpada
16. ^ Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 466
17. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. zăpadă