doctor

Forms

doctor m (plural doctori, feminine equivalent doctoriță or (nonstandard) doctoră or (archaic) doctoreasă)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin doctor (“teacher”), in the Medieval Latin sense of one entitled by his studies to teach at a university.^[2][3][4][1] The sense “physician” is a narrowing of “doctor of medicine”.^[2] The Latin noun is an agent noun from doceō (“to teach”).^[2][5]

DELR also names intermediaries: Polish doktor and German Doktor.^[2] The DLR, DEX and MDA2 add French docteur.^[6][7][4] Wiktionary dates the Latin borrowing to the 17th century, through French or German.^[1] The German word has been in use since the 14th century and the French one since about 1150, both from Latin.^[8][9]

The older form dohtor, the source of popular doftor, DELR explains as a Romanian adaptation, since the cluster /kt/ did not occur in the language at the time.^[2] Tiktin and Ciorănescu proposed a Slavic intermediary, but DELR finds no Slavic records early enough: Vasmer dates the Russian form only to 1601.^[2][3] DELR also lists, and doubts, a Russian source and Modern Greek ντόχτορας (dóchtoras).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to about 1535.^[10] DELR places it between 1535 and 1546, as dohtor in a Slavonic document, and finds the first Romanian text in 1593–1594, again as dohtor, meaning “physician”.^[2] MDA2's first record is doftor in a document of before 1665: „8 lei bătuți am luat de la doftor” “I took eight struck lei from the doctor”.^[4][6]

Semantic evolution

In Old Romanian dohtor and doftor meant a physician, as in the Bible of 1688: „voi sânteți dohtori strâmbi și vraci de reale toți” “you are all false doctors and physicians of evil”.^[6][10] The university title is first recorded in 1674, in the form doctor.^[2] The learned form then spread in both senses, while doftor stayed popular.^[7][3]

The plant name doftor for kinds of aloe probably comes from the plant's medical use.^[2] In chemistry, probă doctor follows German Doktortest and English doctor test.^[2] Colloquially a doctor is an expert in some field.^[7][11]

A family of derivatives followed: doctorie “medicine, remedy” (1648), doctorat (1787), doctoriță “woman doctor” (1813) and doctoral, taken from French in 1840.^[2]

Timeline

• 1535–1546 – dohtor in a Slavonic document, the first record.^[2][10]
• 1593–1594 – dohtor “physician” in a Romanian document.^[2]
• 1642–1647 – doftor in Ureche's chronicle.^[2]
• 1648 – doftoresc “medical” and doftorie “medicine”.^[2]
• 1649 – doftor in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[12]
• before 1665 – doftor in a document, MDA2's first record.^[4]
• 1674 – doctor as a university title.^[2]
• 1688 – dohtori in the Bucharest Bible.^[6]
• 1787 – doctorat “doctorate”.^[2]
• 1813 – dohtoriță “woman doctor; doctor's wife”.^[2]
• 1840 – doctoral, from French.^[2]
• 1868 – doctorand “doctoral candidate”, from German.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A physician: a person with higher medical training who treats and prevents disease in people or animals.^[7][4]
2. The highest academic degree granted by a university, and a person who holds it: doctor în istorie.^[7][13]
3. (colloquial) An expert, someone very skilled in a field.^[7][11]
4. (botany, regional, as doftor) An aloe shrub from which a bitter extract is obtained.^[7][2]

Word family

• doctoral
• doctorand
• doctorantură
• doctoraș
• doctorat
• doctoreasă
• doctorie
• doctoriță
• doftoroaie
• doftoreasă
• doftorie

Related words

• Latin doctor
• French docteur

Usage notes

The feminine is doctoriță;^[1][7] doctoră is nonstandard and doctoreasă archaic.^[1][7] Doctor honoris causa is an honorary title granted without a thesis.^[4][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v 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. doctor
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. doctor
4. ^ 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, 739
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. doctor
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 325
8. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 209
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ 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. doctor
11. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. doctor
12. ^ 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. doftor
13. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. doctor
14. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. doctor