adora

Forms

Verb: present ador, third person adoră, subjunctive să adore, past participle adorat; first conjugation.^[2][1] An old, rare variant is adorarisi.^[3][4] Negulici's dictionary of 1848 has the Latinist form adorare.^[5]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French adorer, also borrowed from Latin adōrō (“to address; to worship”).^[3][2][1] Tiktin, MDA2 and the DA give French alone; the Marcu–Maneca dictionary also compares Italian adorare and the Latin form.^[4][6][7][8] The French verb was itself borrowed from Latin at the end of the 10th century.^[9]

The Latin verb is formed from ad- and ōrō (“to pray, speak a ritual formula”).^[3][10] DELR reports de Vaan's suggestion that this verb comes from ōs (“mouth”), a view Ernout and Meillet reject.^[3] The same Latin verb survives in the inherited ura.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is from 1785.^[3] Tiktin dates it to 1825, glossing it “to worship”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The DA puts the religious sense first, to worship God with all one's soul, and derives from it the sense “to love as a god”, quoting Alexandrescu: „Ce se'nchin[ă] și te ado[a]r[ă]” “who bow down and adore you”.^[7] It notes that by overuse this sense has often weakened to “to love very much”, as in Negruzzi's young men who adored the lady they played cards with.^[7] Negulici gave both senses in 1848: to worship God or bow before someone, and to love a woman passionately.^[5]

The family came from French and Latin at the same time: adorabil “adorable” about 1832, adorator in 1839 and adorație in 1840–1842.^[3]

Timeline

• 1785 – the first record.^[3]
• 1825 – adora “to worship”.^[4]
• c. 1832 – adorabil in Iordache Golescu.^[3]
• 1839 – adorator in the Mozaicul.^[3]
• 1848 – adorare “to worship; to love passionately” in Negulici.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To adore, love passionately; to have a cult for someone or something: Își adoră nepoții.^[2][6]
2. To worship a god; to venerate, deify, honour.^[2][6]

Word family

• adorabil
• adorator
• adorație
• adorare
• adorat

Related words

• ura
• orator

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 15
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2011–), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române (DELR), vol. I: A–B (2011), vol. II: C (2015–2018), București: Editura Academiei Române; continued online at delr.lingv.ro, p. s.v. adora
4. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. adora
5. ^ a b c Negulici, I. D. (1848), Vocabular romînesc de toate vorbele streine întroduse pînă acum în limba romînească și de toate cuvintele ce s-ar mai putea introduce încă, București, p. s.v. adorare
6. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 18
7. ^ a b c Academia Română (1913–1949), Dicționarul limbii române (DA), ed. Sextil Pușcariu, tom I (A–B, C, D–De) and tom II (F–I, J–Lojniță), București: Socec / Universul / Monitorul Oficial și Imprimeriile Statului; page scans at cflr-scans.solirom.ro, p. s.v. adora
8. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. adora
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 65