talpă

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Unknown.

Related with regional Serbo-Croatian tȃlpa / tȃlpa (“plank”), Macedonian талпа (talpa, “plank”), dialectal Bulgarian та́лпа (tálpa, “thick or broad plank, board”), Hungarian talp (“sole”), dialectal Russian те́льпа (télʹpa, “sled or sledge or sleigh with two skids, or one without skids running only on boards”), тельпу́х (telʹpúx, “block or stump from a tree”). Also may be related to Friulian talpe (“paw”). talpinà, talpetà (“to stamp”), Valsugan talpa, talpón (“tree stump”), Venetan and Padovan talpón (“tree stump or rootstock”), and further to be compared to Alemannic German Talpe (“paw”), Silesian German Talpe (“hand”), Thuringian Talpe, Talpsche (“great hand”), talpen (“to walk clumsily; to grab clumsily”), talfern (“to touch with little dexterity”), Middle High German tâpe, talpe (“paw”), Alemannic German antalpen (“to touch with little dexterity”), antapen (“to paw, to grope”), Bavarian Tälpen (“rootstocks”).

Could also be connected to German tappen, English tap, due to a connection to a body part. With such nativity in Germanic the Romanian, Hungarian, and Slavic terms however are frequently ascribed to a dark substrate, so a Gepidic or else East Germanic may be the source. The Slavic terms however are accordingly from Romanian.

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talpă f (plural tălpi)

1. sole of the foot
2. lower parts of a technical applications that bear load
   1. treadle of a machine like a workbench
   2. heel of the butt of a rifle
   3. skid of a sled, sledge or sleigh
   4. ground beam of a building, grade beam
   5. board attached to a building of a farmhouse
   6. any of the two wooden parts on which the cradle of a baby stands
3. (figurative) fundament or basic constituent, pillar

• talpa-cocoșului (“goldilocks buttercup, Ranunculus auricomus”)
• talpa-gâștei (“goosefoot, chenopod”)
• talpa-lupului (“motherwort, Leonurus cardiaca”)
• talpa-ursului (“Acanthus longifolius”)
• talpa-stâncii, talpa-stancei (“Lepidium coronopus”)
• tălpită, tălpig (“loom treadle”)
• tălpălagă, tăpălagă (“plump foot or shoe”)
  • tălpălag, tălpălog, tăpălăgos, tăpălog (“of plump feet”)

• talpă in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language)
• Leschber, Corinna (2006) “Etymologisch problematische Bezeichnungen für ‘Stöcke, Strünke, Balken, Schnäbel’ u.ä. im Rumänischen im Lichte der slavischen Nachbarsprachen. Mit einem Exkurs zur modernen Protobulgaren-Diskussion”, in Wolfgang Dahmen, Günter Holtus, Johannes Kramer, Michael Metzeltin, Wolfgang Schweickard, Otto Winkelmann, editors, Lexikalischer Sprachkontakt in Südosteuropa. Romanistisches Kolloquium XII (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik; 447) (in German), Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, →ISBN, pages 106–113