defect

Forms

defect m or n (feminine singular defectă, masculine plural defecți, feminine/neuter plural defecte)^[1] Older texts also have defet: Heliade-Rădulescu asks how the nation could ennoble itself „prin defeturile și greșalele naturii” “through the defects and errors of nature”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is a learned borrowing borrowed from Latin dēfectus (“failure, lack, deficiency”), with German Defekt as a second model: DELR, MDA2, DEX and Wiktionary give both sources.^[4][3][5][1] Ciorănescu names only the Latin word and dates the borrowing to the 19th century, Tiktin names the Latin word and German, perhaps as an intermediary.^[6][7] Scriban takes the form from Latin but the sense from French défaut.^[8] The Latin noun is formed on dēficiō (“to fail, be lacking”), from dē- and faciō (“to make, do”).^[4][9][10] The German noun, meaning “fault, damage”, is itself from the Latin noun and is recorded from the 16th century.^[10][11]

The adjective “broken, out of order” is borrowed from German defekt, which is the Latin past participle of the same verb; the DLR takes it from Latin.^[4] The early variant defectuș is from Hungarian defektus.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to about 1800, with the sense “lack, flaw”.^[7] DELR's earliest record is of 1805, in the Hungarian-influenced variant defectuș, in a text by Aaron.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is a lack of an expected quality, an imperfection, moral, physical or material.^[4][2] In the 19th century dictionaries it stands for French défaut: Negulici (1848) glosses it with viciu and neperfecție, Costinescu (1870) with cusur and metehnă.^[12][13][14] Beside it stands the technical sense, a fault that keeps a machine or device from working.^[4][5] DELR records the adjective “broken” from 1907 and the verb defecta “to break down” from 1919.^[4] Physics has defect de masă “mass defect”.^[3][15]

The family grew mostly by further loans from French: defectuos “faulty” from French défectueux, defectiv “defective (of a word)” from Latin and French, defectibil from défectible.^[6][4] A second verb defecta “to defect, desert one's side”, recorded in 2006, is from English defect.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1800 – the first record, according to Tiktin.^[7]
• 1805 – the variant defectuș in a text by Aaron.^[4]
• 1815–1820 – defectiv in Budai-Deleanu.^[4]
• c. 1832 – defectuos and defectuozitate in Iordache Golescu's Condica.^[4]
• 1848 – defect in Negulici's dictionary of neologisms.^[12][4]
• 1907 – the adjective “not working properly, broken”.^[4]
• 1919 – the verb defecta “to break down”.^[4]
• 1957 – defectologie, the study of people with disabilities, from Russian.^[4]
• 2006 – defecta “to defect, desert”, from English.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A lack or imperfection, material, physical or moral; a cusur.^[5][3]
2. A fault or breakdown that keeps a machine or device from working properly.^[5][3]
3. Something that does not keep to the rules set in a field.^[5][3]
4. A drawback, an inconvenience.^[5][15]
5. (physics) defect de masă: the mass defect, the difference between the sum of the masses of a nucleus's protons and neutrons and its real mass.^[3][15]

Adjective

1. broken, out of order; having a defect.^[5][3]

Word family

• defecta
• defectiv
• defectolog
• defectologie
• defectuos
• defectuozitate
• defecțiune
• defectibil

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. defect
3. ^ 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, 625
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r 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. defect
5. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 281
6. ^ 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. defect
7. ^ 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. defect
8. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 397
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 184
11. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
12. ^ a b Negulici, I. D. (1848), Vocabular romînesc de toate vorbele streine întroduse pînă acum în limba romînească și de toate cuvintele ce s-ar mai putea introduce încă, București
13. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 1, 301
14. ^ Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État
15. ^ a b c Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. defect