bride → husband 1 realization
ACCEPTED Realization 1
Type Derivation
Language Romanian
Lexeme 1 mirează
Lexeme 2 mireaz
Meaning 1 (dialectal) bride
Direction →
Meaning 2 (ironic, Moldova) husband
Reference MDA2
Comment mireaz is derived from dialectal mirează (literary mireasă) 'bride', which is from mire 'groom', plural (miri) applied to both newlyweds (Cît mac e prin livezi, Atîția ani la miri urez! 'How much [seeds] poppy in the garden, I wish the bride and groom so many years!'). The etymology is unclear, mire is usually compared with Albanian mirë 'good' or Latin miles 'warrior'. Second version is suppoted by the extremely rare Romanian word voină ‘newlywed man’ (Transylvania) and its derivatives voinea and voiniu ‘newlywed man; bridegroom' (Muntenia). This words clearly come from the Slavic война 'war' (Romanian dictionaries sometimes point to a Serbo-Croatian source), but it does not seem to have the meaning of ‘warrior’. Alexandru Ciorănescu suggests a connection between Romanian mire and Greek μύρον ‘miro’, μυρόεις ‘anointed man’, and mireasă with μυρόεσσα. He notes that the laying on of a crown in an Orthodox wedding makes this sacrament look like a coronation, and on the other hand, a coronation is not conceived without anointing. In Orthodox church sacrament of wedding does not involve chrismation, but during wedding “it is customary to draw with the fingers on the groom’s forehead the gesture of chrismation, which was probably real in the early church,” hence the semantic development of the words “anointed one” → “crowned” → “married”. The "Orthodox Encyclopedia" mentions the anointing of the bride and groom in the rite of marriage of the ancient Alexandrian church (Желтов М. С. Александрийское богослужение (обряд) // Православная энциклопедия. Т. I. С. 595-601. [Zheltov M. S. Alexandrian worship (rite) // Orthodox Encyclopedia. T. I. C. 595-601]).

© Anna A. Zalizniak et al. 2002-2023