ceas

Forms

ceas n (plural ceasuri)^[1] The Codicele Voronețean has the old plural ceasure: „Ca în doao ceasure strigară” “for about two hours they cried out”.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic часъ (časŭ, “hour, time”), a word of the Old Church Slavonic of the church.^{[3][4][5][1][2]} Ciorănescu follows Miklosich, Cihac and Meyer, and records Megleno-Romanian ceas too.^[4][6] The Slavonic word, which renders Ancient Greek ὥρα (hṓra) in the Codex Suprasliensis, continues Proto-Slavic *čàsъ (“time”), whose descendants include Bulgarian час (čas) and Serbo-Croatian čas “moment”.^[7][8][9] Wiktionary traces it further to a Proto-Balto-Slavic *keˀs-, probably from a Proto-Indo-European root for time.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, at Psalm 118:146.^[10][3] The Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583) has it in the sense “hour”, of a crowd that shouted for about two hours.^[5][2][11]

Semantic evolution

The DA notes that ceas replaced the old word oară and was in its turn partly replaced by the neologism oră.^[2] Beside the hour it meant a moment, a time or an occasion in the old language, and in the plural the canonical hours, the services read at set hours of the day.^[3][2] The hour gave the distance covered in an hour (la trei ceasuri de București) and the hours shown on a dial.^[12] The sense “clock, watch” is in Klein's dictionary of 1801, which glosses the word with Latin hora and horologium.^[13] Popular belief spoke of a good or an evil hour, ceas bun and ceas rău.^[14][12]

The derivative ceasornic “clock” is recorded from about 1650.^[3] Tiktin and others take it from a Slavonic *ceasovnic influenced by oară; the DA derives it from Bulgarian or Old Russian časovnik brought close to ornic.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[10][3]
• c. 1563–1583 – the plural ceasure “hours” in the Codicele Voronețean.^[5][2]
• 1646 – the diminutive cescuț “instant”.^[3]
• 1649 – in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[15]
• c. 1650 – ceasornic “clock”.^[3]
• 1688 – frequent in the Bucharest Bible.^[16]
• 1693–1714 – ceasnic “clock”.^[3]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary glosses it “hour” and “clock”.^[13]
• 1988 – ceasoficare, the setting up of networks of public clocks.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. An hour, sixty minutes: cu ceasurile “for hours”, în ceasul al doisprezecelea “at the eleventh hour”, and the distance covered in an hour.^[12][5]
2. A moment, a time, the time before or during an event: ceas bun or ceas rău, a lucky or an unlucky moment.^[12]
3. A clock or watch: ceas electronic, ceas solar “sundial”, a merge ca ceasul “to run like clockwork”, and a meter with pointers.^[12][1]
4. (religion) A service held at set hours of the day, the canonical hours.^[12][4]

Word family

• ceasnic
• ceasornic
• ceasornicar
• ceasornicărie
• cesuț

Related words

• orologiu
• ceaslov
• oră
• Old Church Slavonic часъ (časŭ)

Usage notes

A separate interjection ceas! calls a cow to stand still at milking;^[3][2][5] DELR records it from 1907 and gives two explanations, an expressive word or Latin cessā “stop!”.^[3][2][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. ceas
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. ceas
4. ^ a b c 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. ceas
5. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 351
6. ^ Cihac, A. de (1879), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane II: Éléments slaves, magyars, turcs, grecs-moderne et albanais, Frankfurt am Main, p. 47
7. ^ Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress
8. ^ Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill
9. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
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 118:146
11. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. ceas
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. 166
13. ^ a b Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 329
14. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 116
15. ^ Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. ceas
16. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. A Împărățiilor a treia 19:2