arest

Forms

arest n (plural aresturi)^[1] Older Transylvanian forms follow the German pronunciation: a letter of 1737 from Râmnic has arești, „îndată îl va pune la arești” “he will put him under arrest at once”.^[2][3] Șincai has the feminine areșt: „l-au pus în arește” “they put him under arrest”.^[2] Soldiers' speech in Transylvania gave ariște and ariștă, reshaped after the words in -iște, as in „L-închiseră în ariște” “they locked him in the jail” from the Moți country.^[2][4][5]

Etymology

It is borrowed from German Arrest, a word of the Austro-Hungarian army, with Italian arresto as a second model in DEX, MDA2 and Marcu.^{[5][6][3][7][8]} CADE thought a borrowing from Russian арест (arest) possible as well, and Scriban names the Russian, German and Italian words together.^[5][9] For the forms with /ʃ/, DELR records the view that they come from Hungarian áristom.^[5] Ciorănescu instead derives the word from arrestare with the legal sense of French arrêter, and Wiktionary also names arrêt.^[10][1]

The German noun goes back to Medieval Latin arrestum (“seizure”), probably through Dutch, from Old French arest.^[11][12][1] At the root is Latin restō (“to stay behind, stand still”) with the prefix ad-.^[11][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the first record to 1728, in a document published by Nicolae Iorga.^[5] Tiktin has the same year from Radu Popescu's chronicle, where a prisoner is handed over to the German soldiers, „puindu-l la arest” “putting him under arrest”.^[4][2] MDA2's first record is the Râmnic letter of before 1737.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word named both the detention of a person and the building or room where prisoners were held.^[2][6] Șăineanu described it in 1929 as a military and school word of Austro-Hungarian origin, “detention, lock-up”.^[8] The legal phrase arest preventiv “custody before trial” appears in the law collections the DA quotes, and MDA2 adds arest la domiciliu “house arrest”.^[2][3]

Its family came from the same languages: arestant “prisoner” (1788) from Arrestant and arestație “arrest” (1833) from arrestation.^[5] Ciorănescu notes that French arrêt also gave the hunting words aret and areta for a dog's pointing, found in Sadoveanu.^[10] Slang has many names for the lock-up, among them bască, cavou and colivie.^[14]

Timeline

• 1728 – first record, in a document published by Iorga and in Radu Popescu's chronicle.^[5][4]
• 1737 – arești in a letter from Râmnic.^[3][2]
• 1788 – arestant “prisoner” in Budai-Deleanu.^[5]
• 1794 – the feminine arestantă.^[5]
• 1833 – arestație “arrest”.^[5]
• 1870 – Costinescu spells it arrestŭ and glosses it as detention and the house of detention.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. detention of a person under legal guard, arrest: arest preventiv “custody before trial”, arest la domiciliu “house arrest”.^[6][3][16]
2. The place where arrested people are held, a jail.^[6][3]

Word family

• aresta
• arestui

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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. arest
3. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 92
4. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. arest
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. aresta
6. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 59
7. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual
8. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 33
9. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 119
10. ^ a b Ciorănescu, Alexandru (1958–1966), Diccionario etimológico rumano, La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna (Romanian ed.: Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române, București: Saeculum, 2001), p. s.v. arest
11. ^ a b Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter
12. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
13. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
14. ^ Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu
15. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 1, 69
16. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional