Etymologically
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ar

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Forms

ar (third-person singular arã, participle aratã)[1]

  • A verb of the first conjugation: aorist arai, 1st person plural aram, participle aratã, infinitive arari or arare;[2] 3rd person singular arã.[1]
  • Other spellings: aru in Wiktionary;[1] AR in Papahagi's dictionary, with the aorist arái, the participle arát and the infinitive aráre;[3] Pascu heads it by the long infinitive ARARE;[4] Ar, with s-ară "that he plough", infinitive arare and participle arată, in the glossary of P. Papahagi's tales.[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin arō (“to plough”).[4][3][1] The verb is common to the four Eastern Romance languages: Romanian ara, Megleno-Romanian ar and Istro-Romanian arå (Ciorănescu writes oru).[6][7][8] Further west it survives in Italian arare, Spanish arar and Portuguese arar, and Old French arer has nearly died out in the modern French dialects.[9][6]

De Vaan traces the Latin verb to Proto-Italic *araje/o- and Proto-Indo-European *h₂erh₃-ie/o- (“to plough”), and lists among its cognates Ancient Greek ἀρόω (aróō) and Lithuanian árti, both "to plough".[10][11] Latin arātrum (“plough”) is from the same root.[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Pascu quotes the verb from Boiagi's grammar of 1813, with the sense "to plough".[4]

Semantic evolution

The verb has kept the Latin sense: Cunia defines it as working a field with the plough to prepare it for sowing,[2] and Papahagi quotes tátă-su dúsi la ágru s' áră ("his father went to the field to plough").[3] Pascu records the derivative nearare "not ploughing" from Dalametra.[4]

Timeline

  • 1813 – recorded in Boiagi's grammar, one of the sources Pascu names for the word.[4]
  • 1905 – Ar “I plough, I till the land” in the glossary of P. Papahagi's tales.[5]
  • 1925 – Pascu derives it from Latin arāre.[4]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To plough, to till (a field).[1][2][3]
  • Romanian ara

Usage notes

Papahagi also records a Fărșerot ar "they have", the 3rd person plural of am, and notes that the same form is used in Daco-Romanian.[3] Dalametra lists a neuter noun ar "brine".[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 97
  3. ^ a b c d e Papahagi, Tache (1974), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, 2nd augmented ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. 182
  4. ^ a b c d e f 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, 37
  5. ^ a b Papahagi, Pericle (1905), Basme aromâne și glosar, București: Academia Română, p. 531
  6. ^ 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)
  7. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 25
  8. ^ Kovačec, August (1998), Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik (s gramatikom i tekstovima), Pula
  9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  12. ^ Dalametra, I. (1906), Dicționar macedo-român, București: Academia Română, p. 103