deltă

Forms

deltă f (plural delte)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French delta, one of the French geographical terms of the 19th century;^[2][3][4][1] DELR also names borrowed from Modern Greek δέλτα (délta), the Modern Greek learned word.^[2][3][4][1] The dictionaries of neologisms give French and Italian delta together.^[5] The French word, first recorded about 1250 as Old French deltha for the mouth of the Nile, is the name of the Greek letter Ancient Greek δέλτα (délta), used because the capital Δ is triangular like the land between the arms of the river.^[6][2] The Greeks themselves already called the Nile delta by the letter's name.^[2][6]

Romanian borrowed the name of the letter itself as delta, recorded about 1832, and DELR places the geographical term in its family.^[2] Scriban derived the word directly from the ancient Greek letter.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's earliest record is from Dimitrie Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică of 1705, where Cetatea Deltii “the city of Delta” stands for Adrianople, with the Greek letter's name as its source.^[8] The geographical sense is first recorded in 1842: „Apele mari curg în mare pe mai multe guri ... care se numesc delte” “the great rivers flow into the sea through several mouths, which are called deltas”.^[2][9]

Semantic evolution

In the 1840s the word was still explained in the texts that used it: a newspaper of 1846 glossed it as the land piled up at the mouths of rivers.^[9] By the end of the century it was an ordinary geographical term, given in Barcianu's dictionary with German Delta.^[10] With the Danube Delta the word became also a regional name, written Deltă with a capital, and MDA2 records a second sense for the plants and animals that live there.^[9][4] The derivative deltaic “of a delta” followed in 1957, from French deltaïque.^[2]

Timeline

• 1705 – Cetatea Deltii “the city of Delta”, a cipher name for Adrianople in Cantemir.^[8]
• c. 1832 – delta, the name of the Greek letter.^[2]
• 1842 – delte “deltas” in the geographical sense, the first record.^[2][9]
• 1846 – delta explained as the land heaped up at the mouths of rivers, in the newspaper Universul.^[9]
• 1886 – in Barcianu's Romanian–German dictionary.^[10]
• 1957 – the adjective deltaic.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A delta: a landform built up from mud and sand where a river flows into a lake, sea or ocean with a gentle slope and weak tides, the river dividing there into arms.^[3][2]
2. The rich plant and animal life of a delta.^[4]

Related words

• delta
• deltaic
• deltoid

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. delta
3. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 286
4. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 636
5. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. deltă
6. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 401
8. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. deltă
9. ^ a b c d e Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. deltă
10. ^ a b Barcianu, Sava Popovici (1886), Dicționar român-germân și germân-român, revised by D. P. Barcianu, part I: român-germân, Sibiu: Institut tipografic, p. 168