bonă

Forms

bonă f (plural bone)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French bonne (“maid, nursemaid”), with German Bonne as a second model, a loanword of the 19th century.^[2][3][4] Wiktionary and the DLRM name French alone.^[1][5] The French noun is the feminine of the adjective bon (“good”) used as a noun, and the adjective comes from Latin bonus (“good”).^[2][6]

Gabinschi traces the noun to the French children's phrase ma bonne (“my good one”), and counts it as a European loanword that German took as Bonne and Russian as бонна (bonna).^[7] He places it in one family with bună “good”, the feminine of the adjective Romanian inherited from Latin bona, making that adjective its inherited doublet.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR's first record is from Steinberg's dictionary of 1886, with the sense “woman who looks after children”.^[2] MDA2 dates the word only from Duiliu Zamfirescu's novel În război (1902), where someone is asked whether they need a nanny.^[3][8]

Semantic evolution

The DA describes the bonă as a servant who looked after children, usually a foreigner, French or German.^[8] The DLRLC places her in the bourgeois, cosmopolitan families of the old days, and quotes Caragiale mocking the upstarts who had their cocoa spooned to them as children by a Swiss or Belgian nanny and had lost their Romanian r.^[9] The modern dictionaries keep the task of teaching the children a foreign language in the definition.^[4][3] NODEX and the Moldovan school dictionary of 1976 mark the word as dated.^[10]

The word came back into use after 1990: the press of the 2000s writes of a bonă de câini “dog sitter”, a person paid to look after the dogs of the rich while they are on holiday.^[11]

Timeline

• 1886 – bonă “children's nurse” in Steinberg's dictionary, the first record.^[2]
• 1902 – in Duiliu Zamfirescu's novel În război.^[3][8]
• 1931 – CADE defines it as a nurse or servant, usually foreign, who takes children out to play.^[12]
• 2005 – bonă de câini “dog sitter” in the press.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A nanny or governess: a woman employed by a family to bring up the children, often also teaching them a foreign language.^[4][3][1]
2. A woman hired for housework and the care of children; a maid.^[13]

Related words

• bună
• dădacă

Usage notes

The phrase bonă de câini (or pentru câini) “dog sitter” is a recent coinage, compared by Dimitrescu with English dog sitter.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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. bonă
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, 230
4. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 112
5. ^ Academia Republicii Populare Romîne (1958), Dicționarul limbii romîne moderne, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 88
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ a b Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 70
8. ^ 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. bonă
9. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1, 263
10. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. bonă
11. ^ a b c Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. bonă
12. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Adamescu, Gh. (1926–1931), Dicționarul enciclopedic ilustrat „Cartea Românească”, București: Cartea Românească, p. s.v. bonă
13. ^ Dima, Eugenia (coord.) (2007), Dicționar explicativ ilustrat al limbii române, Chișinău: Arc / Gunivas, p. s.v. bonă