spãn

Forms

spãn^[1]

• Feminine spãnã, plural spãnj, feminine plural spãni or spãne.^[2]
• Other spellings: spãnu in Wiktionary;^[1] SPÎN, feminine spînă, in Papahagi's dictionary;^[3] spîn in Dalametra;^[4] Spăn in Geagea;^[5] σπᾶνου, read spanu, in Nikolaidis's Greek script.^[6]
• Regional forms: spî´nu, plural spî´ńi, in the dialect of Metsovo;^[7] spănŭ, feminine spắnă, in the glossary of the ALAR atlas, with the sense "bald".^[8]

Etymology

According to Papahagi's dictionary it is inherited from Vulgar Latin *spanus, a Latin form of Ancient Greek σπανός (spanós),^[3] and Pascu gives the same etymon after Cihac.^[9] Geagea instead takes it directly from Medieval Greek σπανός (spanós),^[5] and Nikolaidis calls it Latin and Greek.^[6] Wiktionary gives the Greek origin, possibly through the Vulgar Latin form.^[1]

Ciorănescu derives Romanian spân from the Greek word and rejects a Latin intermediate as neither possible nor needed, since Sicilian spanu and its Calabrian counterpart were taken straight from Greek; he cites Densusianu, Bezdechi, Rohlfs and REW for the Greek origin.^[10] In Medieval Greek σπανός meant "sparse" and, of a man, "with a thin beard or none";^[11] in Hellenistic Greek it meant "rare" and was used for σπανοπώγων (spanopṓgōn, “with a thin beard”).^[12] Babiniotis takes it as drawn from that compound or directly from σπάνιος (spánios, “rare, scarce”).^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest dictionary to record it, Dalametra's of 1906, glosses it as "without a moustache, beardless".^[4]

Semantic evolution

From "with a thin beard" the word came to mean a man who cannot grow a beard or moustache, and more widely "hairless" and "bald".^[2]{K}^[8] Of a place it means bare, without trees or grass: Papahagi quotes munte spîn, a bare mountain, and Geagea loc spân, ground without grass;^[3][5] the Greek word has the same use.^[14] Papahagi also records the saying și spîn și bun nu s' fáțe ("one cannot be both beardless and good").^[3]

Timeline

• 1906 – spîn “beardless” in Dalametra's dictionary.^[4]
• 1909 – σπᾶνου “beardless” in Nikolaidis's dictionary.^[6]
• 1925 – Pascu derives it from *spanus, a Latin form of the Greek word.^[9]
• 1932 – Geagea derives it directly from Medieval Greek.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. beardless: (of a man) unable to grow a beard or moustache.^[2][1][4]
2. hairless, glabrous; bald.^[1][3][8]
3. (of a mountain or a place) bare, without trees or grass.^[2][3][7]

Related words

• Romanian spân

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 959
3. ^ a b c d e f Papahagi, Tache (1974), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, 2nd augmented ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. 1107
4. ^ a b c d Dalametra, I. (1906), Dicționar macedo-român, București: Academia Română, p. 193
5. ^ a b c d Geagea, Christea (1932), Elementul grec în dialectul aromân, Cernăuți: Institutul de Arte Grafice și Editură Glasul Bucovinei (offprint from Codrul Cosminului VII, pp. 205–431), p. 408
6. ^ a b c Νικολαΐδης, Κωνσταντίνος (1909), Ετυμολογικόν λεξικόν της κουτσοβλαχικής γλώσσης, Αθήνα, p. 502
7. ^ a b Δασούλας, Φώτης (2013), Το βλαχικό ιδίωμα του Μετσόβου, 2nd ed.
8. ^ a b c Saramandu, Nicolae (2023), Glosar aromân, Fonetică și dialectologie XLII: 103–176, p. 164
9. ^ 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, 194
10. ^ Ciorănescu, Alexandru (1958–1966), Diccionario etimológico rumano, La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna (Romanian ed.: Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române, București: Saeculum, 2001)
11. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
12. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας, p. 1366
14. ^ Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki