droga

Forms

droga (third-person singular present droghează, past participle drogat), first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French droguer, the verb formed on French drogue (“drug”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} Marcu and Maneca's dictionary of neologisms also names Italian drogare beside the French verb.^[6] In Romanian it belongs with the noun drog, borrowed from the same French noun and recorded from 1834, a word whose own origin is uncertain: perhaps Dutch droog (“dry”).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the first record to 1932, in the newspaper Opinia, in the sense of giving or taking narcotics.^[2] MDA2 cites only the manuscript files of the Academy dictionary.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The verb is used transitively, “to give narcotics to someone”, and reflexively, “to take narcotics”, and it extends to giving or taking too much medicine, often in irony.^[3][7] The DLR quotes magazines of the 1970s for the reflexive sense, among them a writer who called smoking a way of drugging oneself with nicotine, and for a figurative use: a society that drugs itself with idylls.^[8] The action noun is drogare.^[8]

Timeline

• 1932 – first record, in the newspaper Opinia.^[2]
• 1971 – figurative use in the magazine Contemporanul.^[8]
• 1973 – smoking as drugging oneself with nicotine, in Flacăra.^[8]
• 1975 – young people who drugged themselves, in Contemporanul.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive and reflexive) To give or take narcotics; to drug someone or oneself.^[3][7][1]
2. (transitive and reflexive; colloquial, often ironic) To give or take medicines needlessly or in excess.^[3][7]
3. (reflexive, figurative) To dull oneself with something, as a society with comforting illusions.^[8]

Word family

• drogare

Related words

• drog
• drogherie
• antidrog
• French droguer

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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. drog
3. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1, 332
4. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual
5. ^ Costăchescu, Adriana; Dincă, Daniela; Dragoste, Ramona; Popescu, Mihaela; Scurtu, Gabriela (2009–2010), Dicționar de împrumuturi lexicale din limba franceză (DILF), 2 vols., Craiova: Universitaria
6. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România
7. ^ 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, 761
8. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. droga