Etymologically
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mur

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Pronunciation

Forms

mur m (plural muri)[1]

  • Masculine, plural muri;[1][2] Cunia also gives a neuter plural mururi.[1][2] Mihăileanu gives the definite múrlu.[3]
  • Other spellings: MUR, plural muri and múrurí, in Papahagi's dictionary;[4] mur, plural -uri, in Dalametra;[5] múru in Mihăileanu;[3] μούρου (múru), plural μούρ' (múri), in Nikolaidis's Greek script;[6] muru in Kavalliotis's word list.[7]
  • Regional forms: mur, plural m'ururi, in Turia;[8] múru, plural múri and múruri, in Metsovo;[9] mur among the Fărșerots.[10]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin mūrus (“wall”).[4][11][6][10][1] REW lists the Aromanian word among the descendants of the Latin noun.[12]

Romanian mur in the sense of wall is a learned borrowing from Latin of the Romantic period, while in Aromanian the word is inherited.[13] The western cognates include Italian muro, French mur and Spanish muro.[12][14]

The Latin word had an older form moerus or moirus and meant above all a defensive wall, a city wall.[15][16] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *moi-ro- and Proto-Indo-European *(H)moi-ro- (“building”); the same word is in pōmērium (“the strip of land round the walls”), originally what is behind the wall.[16]

Earliest recorded meaning

Kavalliotis's word list of 1770 has muru for Modern Greek τοῖχος (toîkhos, “wall”).[7]

Semantic evolution

From the Latin defensive wall, the Aromanian word came to mean any wall, also the wall of a house dividing one room from another.[2][4] Papahagi quotes the saying gárdul ári ócl'i, múrlu ári urécl'i (the fence has eyes, the wall has ears),[4] and Cunia the phrase tac ca murlu (to keep as silent as the wall).[2] In Metsovo it also means a heap of stones or earth, a stone pile built in a field, and figuratively a gloomy, silent person;[9] in Turia it is a heap of fallen stones blocking a path.[8]

Timeline

  • 1770 – muru “wall” in Kavalliotis's word list.[7]
  • 1813 – the plural mururi in Boiagi's grammar, as Pascu quotes it.[11]
  • 1901 – múru “wall” in Mihăileanu's dictionary.[3]
  • 1906 – mur in Dalametra's dictionary.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A wall.[1][2][4]
  2. (Metsovo, Turia) A heap of stones.[9][8]
  3. (Metsovo, figurative) A gloomy, silent person.[9]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 682
  3. ^ a b c Mihăileanu, Ștefan (1901), Dicționar macedo-român, București, p. 326
  4. ^ a b c d e Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 714
  5. ^ a b Dalametra, I. (1906), Dicționar macedo-român, București: Academia Română, p. 139
  6. ^ a b Νικολαΐδης, Κωνσταντίνος (1909), Ετυμολογικόν λεξικόν της κουτσοβλαχικής γλώσσης, Αθήνα, p. 302
  7. ^ a b c Meyer, Gustav (1895), Albanesische Studien IV: Das griechisch-südrumänisch-albanesische Wörterverzeichnis des Kavalliotis, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, phil.-hist. Classe 132, p. 113
  8. ^ a b c Бара, Мариана; Каль, Теде; Соболев, Андрей Н. (2005), Южноарумынский говор села Турия (Малый диалектологический атлас балканских языков, серия монографий 1), p. 313
  9. ^ a b c d Δασούλας, Φώτης (2013), Το βλαχικό ιδίωμα του Μετσόβου, 2nd ed.
  10. ^ a b Nevaci, Manuela (2011), Graiul aromânilor fărșeroți din Dobrogea, revised ed., București: Editura Universitară, p. 214
  11. ^ a b 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, 121
  12. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
  13. ^ Ciorănescu, Alexandru (1958–1966), Diccionario etimológico rumano, La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna (Romanian ed.: Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române, București: Saeculum, 2001)
  14. ^ Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  15. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  16. ^ 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