din

Forms

din (+accusative)^[1] Old and regional texts also write it den: the Bucharest Bible of 1688 speaks of the lamp set on a stand to give light „celor den casă” “to those in the house”.^[2]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian de + în, the two prepositions joined into one.^[3][2][4][1] Candrea and Densusianu give the same analysis, and Cihac traced the pair to Latin dē and in.^[5][6] Scriban also explains it as a compound of de and în.^[7]

The compound survives in all four branches: Aromanian din, Megleno-Romanian din and Istro-Romanian din.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to Neacșu's letter of 1521.^[3] The 16th-century psalters use it often: the Psaltirea Voronețeană (c. 1551–1558) has it a dozen times and the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578) about seventy-five times.^[8] MDA2 cites the Codicele Voronețean as its first record.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The preposition marks a starting point inside a place, the opposite of în: a sări din lac în puț “to jump from the pond into the well”, that is, out of the frying pan into the fire.^[3] From the local sense it came to mark origin and material, a time from which something starts, a part of a whole, a cause and a manner.^[9][2] In set phrases it marks the instrument or the part of the body that moves: a bate din aripi “to flap the wings”, a da din coadă “to wag the tail”, a strânge din umeri “to shrug”.^[3]

Old texts also have den, and regional speech dân and dăn.^[2] Tiktin lists the old spellings deîn and diîn as well, but thinks they were probably read den and din.^[3]

Timeline

• 1521 – first record, in Neacșu's letter.^[3]
• c. 1551–1558 – din in the Psaltirea Voronețeană.^[8]
• c. 1563–1583 – din in the Codicele Voronețean.^[4]
• 1649 – din in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[10]
• 1688 – den in the Bucharest Bible.^[2]

Meanings

Preposition

1. (place) in, on: marks where someone or something is: tabloul din sufragerie “the painting in the living room”.^[9][1]
2. from, out of: marks the starting point of a movement: a ieșit din curte “he came out of the yard”; with în, movement from one place to the next of the same kind.^[9][1]
3. Marks origin, source or material: un ceai din flori de tei “a tea made from lime blossoms”, o masă din lemn “a wooden table”.^[9]
4. (time) Marks the moment of an action or the point from which it starts: din copilărie “since childhood”.^[9]
5. (partitive) of, one of: unul din prieteni “one of the friends”.^[9]
6. Marks a cause or a manner: din greșeală “by mistake”, din memorie “from memory”.^[9]
7. Marks the instrument or the part of the body moved, in set phrases: a bate din palme “to clap”.^[9][3]

Related words

• de
• în

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. din
3. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. din
4. ^ 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, 716
5. ^ a b Candrea, I.-A.; Densusianu, Ov. (1907–1914), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române: elementele latine (A–Putea), București, p. s.v. din
6. ^ Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 120
7. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 427
8. ^ 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 84:5
9. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 315
10. ^ 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. din