dumneavoastră

Etymology

It is a compound from Romanian domnie + vostru, literally “your lordship”: the articled form of the noun and the feminine of the possessive.^{[2][2][3][4][5][1]} Ciorănescu lists it with dumneata, dumnealui and dumnealor among the reduced polite forms of the noun.^[6]

The noun is formed on domn (“lord, master”), from Latin dominus (“master”), and the possessive is from voster, the popular form of vester (“your”).^[7][6][8] Wiktionary compares Spanish usted from vuestra merced (“your grace”) and Portuguese você.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR has the first record in 1592, in the form domniavoastră, in a 16th-century Romanian document.^[4] MDA2 dates it to before 1619, in a text of Cuvente den bătrâni.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In old Romanian domnia with a possessive was a reverent way to address or name a person of rank, and the less formal dumneata (from 1521) and the third-person dumnealui were made the same way.^[4] Dumneavoastră marks the highest degree of politeness, for one person or several;^[4][5] dumneata now marks only a slight one.^[4][5] Old texts also used it after a vocative as a deferential address, as in Boieri dumneavoastră! in Negruzzi.^[5]

DELR also records the old plural dumile voastre, from domniile voastre.^[4] Many reduced forms arose in speech: dumnevoastră, domneavoastră, dumvastră and the familiar mneavoastră.^[4][3] The word is often abbreviated in writing as d-voastră or dvs.^[9][3]

Timeline

• 1592 – domniavoastră, the first record of the word.^[4]
• before 1619 – in a text of the Cuvente den bătrâni.^[3]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary renders it with Latin Vestrae Dominationes.^[10]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. you: the polite pronoun of the second person, singular and plural, used with plural verb forms: Dumneavoastră ce doriți? “What would you like?”^[2][3][1]
2. (obsolete) Placed after a vocative, a deferential form of address.^[3][5]

Related words

• domn
• domnie
• dumneata
• dumnealui
• vostru

Usage notes

The pronoun has no separate genitive or dative forms in the standard language; regional and old texts have dumilorvoastre and similar forms.^[9][3] The popular variant is dumnevoastră.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 336
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, 771
4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. domn
5. ^ 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. dumneavoastră
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. domn
7. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 744
8. ^ 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. vostru
9. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 184
10. ^ Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 356