fantomă

Forms

fantomă f (plural fantome)^[1] An older neuter fantom, plural fantoame or fantomuri, occurs in Negruzzi: „La un loc cu năluci albe și fantomuri sperioși” “together with white spectres and frightening phantoms”.^[2][3] Tiktin also records the form fandomă.^[4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French fantôme.^[3][5][4][1] The French word continues Old French fantosme (about 1130), from Latin phantasma, from Ancient Greek φάντασμα (phántasma, “apparition, vision”).^[6][1] DHLF explains its form by a southern form Vulgar Latin *fantauma, taken from the Ionian Greek of Marseille.^[6]

Romanian also has fantasmă, the learned doublet of the same Greek word.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is from 1821, in Leon Asachi, with the sense “phantom”.^[4] MDA2 dates it from Negruzzi's collected writings of 1872.^[3] In Grigore Alexandrescu's poem a crowned phantom rises from an opened grave: „Un mormânt se desvelește, O fantomă 'ncoronată din el iese”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The first sense, an apparition of a dead person, soon gave figurative ones: something whose existence is uncertain or only apparent, an obsessive idea, a haunting memory.^[3] Medicine once also used the word for the leather model of a pregnant woman on which students practised obstetrics.^[3]

The noun is also used after another noun like an adjective: guvern fantomă “a government without real power”, and the press made many such compounds, oraș-fantomă “ghost town” and firmă-fantomă “sham company”.^[5][3][7] Medicine speaks of a membru fantomă “phantom limb”.^[3]

Timeline

• 1821 – first record, in Leon Asachi.^[4]
• 1872 – fantomă and the neuter fantom in Negruzzi's writings.^[3][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A ghost, phantom: an unreal being that people believe they see, or that writers imagine; a stafie, nălucă.^[5][3][1]
2. (figurative) Something with a fictitious or uncertain existence; used after a noun: guvern fantomă “a government with no real power”.^[5][3]
3. (figurative) An obsessive idea or memory: fantomele trecutului “the ghosts of the past”.^[3]

Related words

• fantasmă
• French fantôme

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Academia Română (1913–1949), Dicționarul limbii române (DA), ed. Sextil Pușcariu, tom I (A–B, C, D–De) and tom II (F–I, J–Lojniță), București: Socec / Universul / Monitorul Oficial și Imprimeriile Statului; page scans at cflr-scans.solirom.ro, p. s.v. fantomă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 876
4. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. fantomă
5. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 381
6. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. fantôme
7. ^ Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. fantomă