excursie

Forms

excursie f (plural excursii)^[1] Șincai wrote escursie: „Romanii… agiungând până la Tisă, ba trecând și Tisa cu escursia lor, s-au tare împuternicit în Dachia cea veche” “the Romans… reaching the Tisza, and even crossing the Tisza in their raid, grew very strong in old Dacia”.^[2][3] The 19th century also used escursiune, excursiune and, rarely, escursă and escurțiune;^[3][4][5] excursiune is still listed as a variant.^[3][4][5]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin excursiō (“a sally, raid; an outing”), taken as a learned word, with French excursion as a second model: DELR, the DLR, MDA2, DEX and DN name both.^{[3][2][4][5][6][1]} The Latin noun is from excurrō (“to run out, sally forth”), from currō (“to run”).^[3][7]

The French word was borrowed from Latin about 1500, at first for a raid into enemy country.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Gheorghe Șincai's chronicle, of 1812, as escursie in the old military sense, a raid into enemy land.^[3][2] MDA2 dates it by the 1853 print of the chronicle.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The military sense, a raid or incursion, lasted through the 19th century, in Săulescu, Hasdeu and Eminescu, and is now obsolete.^[2][4] The modern sense of a trip for pleasure, study or sport appears in the same century: Vasici wanted to make excursions through the Banat, a calendar of 1859 has an ecscursie, and Caragiale wrote of steamers making excursiuni de plăcere “pleasure trips”.^[2] Technical senses followed: a deviation from a position of balance or a mean value, as in excursie de frecvență, and in phonetics the moment when the speech organs move into position for a sound.^[3][6]

The family grew in the second half of the 19th century: excurs “digression” in 1871, from Latin, excursionist in 1884, from French, and excursiv in 1888.^[3]

Timeline

• 1812 – escursie “raid” in Șincai's chronicle, the first record.^[3][2]
• 1853 – the print of Șincai's chronicle that MDA2 cites.^[4]
• 1859 – ecscursie “pleasure trip” in a calendar.^[2]
• 1871 – excurs “digression”.^[3]
• 1884 – excursionist “tripper”.^[3]
• 1888 – excursiv “digressive”.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A trip, an outing, usually in a group, on foot or by some means of transport, for education, sport or recreation.^[5][4][1]
2. (phonetics) The moment when the speech organs take up the position for a sound.^[6]
3. (technical) A deviation from a position of balance or a mean value: excursie de frecvență.^[3]
4. (obsolete) A military incursion, a raid.^[2][4]

Word family

• excurs
• excursionist
• excursiv

Related words

• curs

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. excursie
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. excursie
4. ^ 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, 853
5. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 368
6. ^ a b c Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. excursie
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert