elegant

Forms

elegant m or n (feminine singular elegantă, masculine plural eleganți, feminine/neuter plural elegante)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French élégant, with Latin ēlegāns (“choosing carefully; tasteful, refined”) as a second source, one of the neologisms that the dictionaries trace to both French and Latin.^[2][3][4][5] Tiktin names French alone, and Wiktionary also gives French as the immediate source, itself a learned loan from Latin.^[6][1] Scriban gave only the Latin word.^[7]

The French word was taken from Latin in the 12th century but was rare before the 15th.^[8] The Latin word is the present participle of an unrecorded verb *ēlegāre, related to ēligō (“to pick out, choose”) and legō (“to gather, choose; to read”).^[2][9][1] Its first sense was “careful in choosing, fastidious”, and in early Latin it could be a reproach, “fussy, luxurious”.^[2][9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR dates the first record to Ion Budai-Deleanu's Țiganiada (1800–1812), in the sense “distinguished by good taste in dress or manners; graceful”;^[2][6] Tiktin's date is 1800.^[2][6] MDA2 dates it by Budai-Deleanu's Romanian–German lexicon of 1818.^[3] The abstract noun eleganță is recorded earlier, in 1794, as eleganție in a Vienna calendar.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Negulici's dictionary of neologisms (1848) still explained the word with ales and delicat, “having elegance, grace and nobility”.^[11] In the 19th century it was used mostly of people and their clothes: Negruzzi wrote of ladies who are not so elegant, and of a young man stepping out of a carriage dressed by the fashion of the court.^[12][13] Barcianu (1886) also gave it as a noun, “an affected, dressed-up person”, and CADE (1931) as “a man of elegant dress and manners”.^[14][15]

From people and clothes the sense widened to anything marked by harmony of form and tasteful restraint: a style, a page of prose, a house.^[4][7] A figurative sense, “tactful, free of roughness”, followed.^[4] The adverb is the same word: a se îmbrăca elegant “to dress elegantly”.^[3]

Timeline

• 1794 – eleganție, a form of eleganță, in a Vienna calendar.^[2]
• 1800–1812 – elegant in Budai-Deleanu's Țiganiada, the first record.^[2]
• 1818 – in Budai-Deleanu's Romanian–German lexicon.^[3]
• 1848 – in Negulici's dictionary of neologisms.^[11]
• 1870 – inelegant, neelegant and the rare superlative elegantissim.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of clothes: made with taste, handsome; of people: distinguished by the harmony and good taste of their dress and bearing.^[4][3]
2. (often as an adverb) Marked by harmony of form, a pleasing combination of parts and tasteful sobriety: un stil elegant “an elegant style”.^[4][16]
3. (figurative) tactful, without roughness: un refuz elegant “a tactful refusal”.^[4]

Word family

• eleganță
• inelegant
• ineleganță
• neelegant
• neeleganță

Related words

• alege
• elită

Usage notes

Slang has many equivalents for “elegantly dressed”, among them la patru ace and la țol festiv.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. elegant
3. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 800
4. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 348
5. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual
6. ^ 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. elegant
7. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 464
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. elegans
11. ^ a b Negulici, I. D. (1848), Vocabular romînesc de toate vorbele streine întroduse pînă acum în limba romînească și de toate cuvintele ce s-ar mai putea introduce încă, București
12. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. elegant
13. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 205
14. ^ Barcianu, Sava Popovici (1886), Dicționar român-germân și germân-român, revised by D. P. Barcianu, part I: român-germân, Sibiu: Institut tipografic, p. 206
15. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Adamescu, Gh. (1926–1931), Dicționarul enciclopedic ilustrat „Cartea Românească”, București: Cartea Românească
16. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. elegant
17. ^ Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu