Etymologically
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Roman

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Pronunciation

  • /ʁoˈmaːn/[1]

Forms

Roman m (genitive Romanes or Romans, plural Romane)[1] The plural was at first Romans (1642, Moscherosch) or Romainen and Romanen (1682); Romane is found from 1691 and has been the only form since the early 19th century.[2][3] Early variants of the singular are Romain, Romayn and Romän.[3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French roman (“novel”), from Old French romanz, romant (“a story in the vernacular”), borrowed in the first half of the 17th century.[5][4][3] The Old French word first named a text written in the Romance vernacular rather than in Latin, usually a narrative translated or adapted from a Latin original, and it goes back to Vulgar Latin *rōmānicē (“in the Roman manner, in the vernacular”), an adverb formed from Latin Rōmānicus (“Roman”), itself from Rōma (“Rome”).[4][3][6] Kluge starts instead from the early Romance adjective *rōmānicus.[5] Pfeifer notes that the adverb may also have been formed directly from Rōmānus (“Roman, Latin”), which was the usual word for the language.[4]

The same loan is Dutch roman and Swedish roman.[5] The medieval German adapters of French romances did not take the word over; the German prose romances of the 15th and 16th centuries called themselves Historie.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Harsdörffer in 1641 is the first to use the word, glossing French Les Romans as love stories written in unbound speech, without the law of rhyme.[3][2] A year later Moscherosch complains that a lackey would sooner hold Ovid or die Romans in his hand than a prayer book.[3]

Semantic evolution

At first the word named the fashionable, intricate adventure and love stories in prose, often translated from French, as distinct from the old chapbooks.[2][7] Since many were of poor quality, Roman acquired a pejorative tone, and Gottsched gives the novel only one of the lowest places among the kinds of poetry.[2] In the 18th century it was gradually recognised as a demanding art form able to portray the newly discovered individuality of the middle class, with Blankenburg's Versuch über den Roman (1774) as a milestone.[2] Kluge dates the modern sense, a long work of prose fiction, to the 17th century.[5] Many compounds name its kinds: Briefroman, Bildungsroman, Schlüsselroman, Entwicklungsroman.[2]

Colloquially Roman also means an overlong account, and a life full of incident can be der reinste Roman.[8] The derivative Romancier “novelist” was taken from French in the second half of the 18th century.[4] The word passed into Hungarian as román “novel”, recorded from 1753.[9]

Timeline

  • 1641 – Harsdörffer uses Les Romans and explains it in German.[3][2]
  • 1642 – Moscherosch writes the plural Romans.[2][3]
  • 1691 – Stieler's dictionary records Roman, with the plural Romane.[7][2]
  • 1774 – Blankenburg's Versuch über den Roman helps establish the genre as an art form.[2]
  • 2nd half of the 18th century – Romancier is borrowed from French.[4]
  • Early 19th century – Romane becomes the only plural.[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (without plural) The novel as a literary genre, long fiction in prose that tells the fate of one or more people: der Roman des Realismus.[8][1]
  2. A novel, a single work of this genre: Sie liest gerade einen historischen Roman, der in Venedig spielt.[8][1]
  3. (colloquial) An overlong, detailed account: Statt einer kurzen Antwort schrieb er mir einen ganzen Roman.[8]

Word family

  • Romancier
  • Bildungsroman
  • Briefroman
  • Kriminalroman
  • romanisch
  • Romanze
  • romantisch
  • Rom

Usage notes

Roman with the stress on the first syllable is a male given name, from Latin Rōmānus.[1][10]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Schulz, Hans; Basler, Otto, et al. (1913–1988), Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch, 7 vols., Strasbourg / Berlin: Trübner / De Gruyter; 2nd ed., ed. Gerhard Strauß et al. (1995–), Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; via OWID, Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache
  4. ^ a b c d e f Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  5. ^ a b c d Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 772
  6. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 700
  7. ^ a b c Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 14, 1152
  8. ^ a b c d Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  9. ^ Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
  10. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org