defaimă

Forms

defaimă f (plural defaime)^[1]

Etymology

It is either inherited from Vulgar Latin *diffāmia (“defamation”), formed like Latin īnfāmia (“disgrace”), or a back-formation from Romanian defăima.^[2][3] Pușcariu, Rosetti, Candrea and Densusianu, Ciorănescu and the REW reconstruct the Latin noun, and Cihac already compared *diffāmia with Spanish disfamia;^[2][3][4][5] DLR and MDA2 derive the noun from the verb.^[6][7] Ciorănescu notes that most scholars start instead from the verb, through a popular *diffāmiāre.^[3] The base is Latin fāma (“talk, report, reputation”);^[1][8] Tiktin takes the /i/ of Romanian faimă from the verb.^[9]

The rare variant defamă (Pontbriant, Laurian and Massim) is a latinized form.^[2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the noun to the Slavonic–Romanian Gospel book of 1551–1553, where it occurs on folio 38v.^[2] MDA2 and DLR have it first in a document of 1783 printed by Iorga: „Pentru defaima ce au defăimat pă chir Nicola” “for the slander they spoke against kir Nicola”.^[7][6]

Semantic evolution

The meaning has stayed “slander, abuse, disgrace”;^[7] MDA2 also lists “blame”, “calumny”, “blasphemy” and the old phrase a lua în defaimă “to mock”.^[7] Asachi, Heliade Rădulescu and Pann use it in the 19th century, and it survives in proverbs: Care ascultă la ușă își aude defaima “he who listens at the door hears himself slandered”.^[6] Polizu, Costinescu and Laurian and Massim still list it, but DLR and MDA2 label it obsolete, and Wiktionary rare.^[6][7][1]

Timeline

• 1551–1553 – in the Slavonic–Romanian Gospel book, the first record.^[2]
• 1783 – defaima in a document printed by Iorga.^[7][6]
• 1862 – the latinized defamă in Pontbriant.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. (obsolete) slander, calumny, defamation; the same as defăimare.^[6][7][1]
2. (obsolete) blame, reproach.^[7]

Word family

• defăima
• defăimător

Related words

• faimă
• Latin fāma

Usage notes

The plural is defaime, and in old texts rarely defăimi.^[6] The same spelling defaimă is also the old third-person present of the verb defăima, which is how the 16th-century psalters and the Bible of 1688 use it.^[1][10][11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. defăima
3. ^ 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. defaimă
4. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. 476
5. ^ Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 86
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. defaimă
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 624
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. fāma
9. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. defăima
10. ^ 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 73:11
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ps 14:5