| Title: | Cuvinte din registrul colocvial. Note lexicale |
| Author: | Florin Vasilescu |
| Publication: | Limba română, LXIII (3), p. 325 |
| p-ISSN: | 0024-3523 |
| Publisher: | Editura Academiei |
| Place: | București |
| Year: | 2014 |
| Abstract: | The etymology and the meaning of the following words are discussed, based on their attestations. The author suggests that the word „şmenar” (meaning swindler, person that illegally exchanges money and replaces the bank notes with pieces of paper) is derived from the Czech word “šmenarna” (meaning “exchange office”). The word şmen means the swindle described above (the replacement of banc notes with pieces of paper). The word ţuţer (with its variant ţuţăr) means “person who takes advantage on the weakness of an influential person and becomes the protege of that person”. For its origin, there are two hypotheses: one, it comes from the Austrian German “zuzeln” (“to suck”, equivalent with the slang “to suck in”) and the second, it comes from the Modern Greek tzoutzes (meaning “dwarf” and “clown”). The word meltean, meaning “uneducated and arrogant person” could come from the English melt with the Romanian suffix -ean added, and also from the Hungarian méltatlan, meaning “contemptible, showing no decency”. Two meaning of the verb “a sparge” (to break) are also discussed. One is familiar, “a sparge bani” means “to spend carelessly the money” and originates from the Italian “spargere” meaning “to scatter something”and the second is argotic, X s-a spart (X broke himself) meaning “to give away information about a felony”. This second meaning comes also from Italian (spargere una notizia), but transforms the transitive form into reflexive, to gain suggestion power. It is also discussed the hypothesis that the expression a face hai (to make big noise while having fun) does not originate from the Turkish “hay huy” (meaning “big noise”), but, due its attestation (the thirties period of the 20th century) from the English high (high on whiskey or drugs). |
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| Language: | Romanian |
| Links: |  pdf  html |
Citations to this publication: 1
| 1 | Florin Sterian | Bibliografia românească de lingvistică (BRL, 57, 2014). Lucrări de lingvistică apărute în țara noastră în cursul anului 2014 | LR, LXIV (2), 183 | 2015 |
References in this publication: 2
| 41 | Rodica Zafiu | 101 cuvinte argotice | Humanitas | 2010 | |
| 3 | Iorgu Iordan | Despre inovație în limbă | SCL, XI (3), 519 | 1960 |
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