cât

Forms

cât m or n (feminine singular câtă, masculine plural câți, feminine/neuter plural câte)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin quantus (“how great, how much”).^{[2][3][1][4][5]} It survives in all four branches: Aromanian cãt, Megleno-Romanian cǫt and Istro-Romanian cât.^[3][2][6] Its Romance cognates include Italian quanto, Occitan quant, Old French quant, Spanish cuanto and Portuguese quanto.^[3][4]

The regular outcome of the Latin word would be ⟨*cânt⟩, and the old and Aromanian forms cănt and Aromanian cântu are recorded.^[3][2][7] Procopovici explained the loss of the ⟨n⟩ by a blending with quotus (“of what number”), which DA, DEX, MDA2 and Ciorănescu accept.^[3][2][8] DELR finds this difficult, since the Latin word would have given ⟨cot⟩ and was not inherited in any other Romance language.^[2] Scriban put the change down to the influence of tot in phrases such as ⟨tot atât cât⟩.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the first record to the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of about 1500, which has cît in Psalm 1:3 and the plural forms câți and câte.^[2][10] MDA2 and Tiktin cite the Codicele Voronețean.^[8][11] It asked and stated a quantity, “how much, as much as”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

From the question of quantity the word became a relative and a correlative (atât... cât “as much... as”) and a conjunction of time (cât trăiesc “as long as I live”), of degree, and in the old and popular language of result, “so that”.^[3][12][11] It is the base of many compounds: decât, încât, întrucât, câtva, oricât and câtuși in câtuși de puțin “in the least”.^[3] Ciorănescu records the sense “huge” (câtă căciula, in Creangă) and its derivative câtamai “so big”, recorded from 1871.^[3][2]

The neuter noun cât “quotient” of arithmetic, recorded from 1821, was formed after Latin quotiens and German Quotient.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1500 – the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[2][10]
• c. 1563–1583 – the Codicele Voronețean.^[8][11]
• 1787 – the derivative câtățime “quantity”.^[2]
• 1821 – the noun cât “quotient”.^[2]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda, in the Latinist spelling quảtu, glosses it with Latin quantus.^[13]
• 1871 – câta and câtamai “so big”, in Laurian and Massim's dictionary.^[2]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. how much, how many: Câți oameni erau acolo?^[1][3]
2. As much as, all that: Ia câte vrei.^[3][11]

Determiner

1. How much, how many: Câte zile mai stați?^[1][11]

Adverb

1. How much, how (in questions and exclamations): Cât costă?, Cât de frumos scrie!^[11][3]
2. As much as, as big as: mănâncă cât doi.^[3]

Conjunction

1. while, as long as: Cât stai la noi, nu-ți lipsește nimic.^[12]
2. As far as, to the degree that: cât se poate de bine “as well as possible”;^[1] cu cât... cu atât “the more... the more”.^[12]
3. (old and popular) So that: striga cât se auzea în tot satul.^[12]
4. Although, however much.^[12]

Noun

1. (arithmetic) A quotient.^[12][1]

Word family

• câtelea
• câtime
• câtuși
• câtva
• decât
• încât
• întrucât
• nicidecât
• numaidecât
• oricât
• câtamai

Related words

• atât
• Latin quantus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. cât
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. cît
4. ^ a b Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 32
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6933
6. ^ Kovačec, August (1998), Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik (s gramatikom i tekstovima), Pula, p. s.v. cât
7. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 66
8. ^ 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, 347
9. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 298
10. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 1:3
11. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. cât
12. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 165
13. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 568