apartament

Forms

apartament n (plural apartamente)^[1] The old plural apartamenturi occurs in the Uricariul collection: „se va trage în ale sale apartamenturi” “will withdraw to his apartments”.^[2][3] Negulici's dictionary of 1848 spells it apartament and apartement, and Costinescu (1870) appartamentŭ.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French appartement and the Italian appartamento.^[3][6][7][8] DEX and Wiktionary name only the French word.^[9][1]

French took the word from the Italian, which is from Spanish apartamiento (“secluded place”), a derivative of apartar (“to separate, set apart”), from aparte (“apart”), made of a (“to”) and parte (“part”), from Latin pars (“part”).^[7][10][11] DHLF dates the Italian word in French to 1559, in Du Bellay;^[10][11] DELI has the Italian word from 1538, spelled apartamento.^[10][11] Scriban derived the Italian word from appartare (“to set apart”);^[12][1] Wiktionary has the Spanish word adapted to that verb.^[12][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the first record to 1794, in a manuscript by Cantacuzino, with the sense of a set of rooms forming a dwelling in a larger building;^[7][6] Tiktin has the same year.^[7][6] MDA2's first record is from before 1834, in the Uricariul document collection.^[3]

Semantic evolution

At first the word named a suite of rooms set apart in a large house or a palace, such as the rooms of a prince.^[2][4] French had the same sense in the 17th century.^[10] With buildings divided into separate dwellings it came to mean a flat of several rooms in a block, the usual sense today.^[9][13][10] Communist-era building gave compounds such as apartament-etalon, a model flat shown to future residents, recorded in 1962.^[14]

Timeline

• 1794 – first record, in a manuscript by Cantacuzino.^[7][6]
• before 1834 – the plural apartamenturi in the Uricariul collection.^[3][2]
• 1848 – apartament and apartement in Negulici's dictionary of neologisms.^[4]
• 1962 – apartament-etalon “model flat” in the press.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. An apartment or flat: a group of rooms with their annexes in a building, forming one dwelling: un apartament cu trei camere “a three-room flat”.^[9][3][1]
2. (dated) A suite of rooms set apart in a large house or palace.^[2][12]

Related words

• French appartement
• Italian appartamento
• parte

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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. apartament
3. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 77
4. ^ 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. apartament
5. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 1, 56
6. ^ 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. apartament
7. ^ a b c d e 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. apartament
8. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. apartament
9. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 52
10. ^ a b c d e Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
11. ^ a b c Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
12. ^ a b c Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 110
13. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. apartament
14. ^ a b Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. apartament