xhubletë

See also: xhublete

Albanian

grua me xhubletë ― woman with a xhubleta

Alternative forms

• gjubletë, gjybletë
• gjupetë — Kukës

Etymology

Seemingly akin to xhybe (“kind of traditional cloak”), from Ottoman Turkish, and Italian giubbetto (“small jacket”), all ultimately from Arabic جُبَّة (jubba, “jubbah”), although the great age of the dress and it being fabricated locally rather than being sold in markets, where linguistic loans are likely to occur, makes it unclear why the term would be borrowed. It is possible for an original similar-sounding term to have been altered by Turkish and/or Italian influence, acquiring, likely along other parts of the word, the initial xh-, a non-native phoneme found chiefly in relatively recent Turkish and Italian loans. Alternatively, it has also been brought forward that until the dress fell into disuse there would not necessarily have been a need for a particular word for it.

Alternatively, according to Dedvukaj, the form gjubletë is older, and a native word, ultimately deriving from Proto-Indo-European *h₁su- + *melit, literally "good honey", with the *melit leading to bletë (“bee”) (see for more). Dedvukaj reconstructs a Proto-Albanian *jú-(m)blit-ā.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -etə

Noun

xhubletë f (plural xhubleta)

1. A black, woolen, bell-shaped women's dress traditional of the highlands of northern Albania.

Declension

Declension of xhubletë

	singular		plural
	indefinite	definite	indefinite	definite
nominative	xhubletë	xhubleta	xhubleta	xhubletat
accusative		xhubletën
dative	xhublete	xhubletës	xhubletave	xhubletave
ablative			xhubletash

References

• Ardian Vehbiu (2022) “Veshje e vjetër emër i ri”, in Peizazhe të fjalës‎^[2] (in Albanian), archived from the original on 2023-08-31

Further reading

• FGJSSH: Fjalor i gjuhës së sotme shqipe [Dictionary of the modern Albanian language]‎^[3], 1980, page 2201a
• “xhubletë”, in FGJSH: Fjalor i gjuhës shqipe [Dictionary of the Albanian language] (in Albanian), 2006
• Newmark, L. (1999) “xhubletë”, in Oxford Albanian-English Dictionary‎^[4]